"He'll never come no more, I'm afraid. 'Twas only the mill that kept him so long. He must have London booming round him. He's been in hospital since he was here, for the doctors to cut a lump of flesh out of his neck. But he's very well again now; and busy about a coming turn up between Tom King and an unknown."
"How do it feel to be among the race of married men, Billy?" asked Simon Snell.
"'Tis a very proper feeling, Simon," answered the other. "In fact, I'll go so far as to say a man don't know he's born until he's married. You chaps--Bartley here and suchlike--talk of freedom. But 'tis all stuff and nonsense. You ban't free till you'm married; you be a poor, unfinished thing without your own woman, and I should advise dashing blades like you, Simon, and you, Timothy, to look around before the grey hairs begin to thrust in. Thirty to thirty-five is the accepted time. I'm thirty-three myself."
"There's outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace I see, too," said Mr. Moses. "I was by your house a bit ago, and I was terrible pleased to mark all the windows mended and a bit of paint on the woodwork of 'em, and a new swing gate where you used to have nought but a pole across and a piece of old sacking to keep the chickens in. The place is a changed place and so smart as any bride could wish for."
"'Tis all that and more," declared Mr. Screech. "And if you'd gone in--and you'll always be welcome, Moses--you'd have found my wife fresh as paint herself in her new print, and, what's still more wonderful, my mother with her hair all twisted tidy and her clothes neat as ninepence. I would have it, you must know. 'Us must pull ourselves together,' I said to mother. 'Dorcas comes from a terrible tidy family,--too tidy, you might say, and I'm not pretending I mind the fowls in the kitchen myself, or the dogs on the beds; but there 'tis--with a bride we must meet her halfway; and she's as clean and trim herself as a hen hedge-sparrow.' My mother made no objection--took to her second-best dress without a murmur, and bought a new one for the Lord's Day."
"You're a reformed character, in fact," declared Maunder. "And I for one rejoice at it, for I've often feared you and me might some day meet in an unfriendly way when I stood for the law."
"Don't fear it," answered the other. "I'm all right and full of contrivances for making a bit of money in a straight and proper manner."
"David tells me your rabbit trap is the wonderfullest thing in that line he've met with, and good for ten pounds to sell," put in Bartley.
"More like twenty," answered Screech. "'Tis a masterpiece of a trap, and I've had a good offer or two already, but not enough."
"We get more greedy after money when we'm married, I suppose," ventured Snell. "Of course we want more then."