"To think as he be no more than six-and-thirty!" she said.
"How d'you know that?"
"He told me. I forget how it went, but I'd just said I reckoned he was fifty, and he seemed rather troubled."
"Fancy your speaking like that!"
"He don't look much less, all the same. And I gave him a bit of advice too."
"Advise him! Nought stops you," Daniel said with his mouth full.
"Why should it? After you've been married a month—there 'tis—you've got more wisdom and understanding of menfolk than a century of maiden life could bring to 'e. I feel like a mother to these here helpless men a'ready."
"Never was such a large-hearted female as you, Sarah Jane."
"What that man wants is a wife. I couldn't have read him any more than you could a bit ago; now 'tis as plain to my understanding as this cup of tea. A wisht, hangdog, sorrowful face to my eye; yet very good-looking in his thin way. But hungry—awful hungry."
"As to women, he's had enough of them. One treated him shameful. But 'tisn't them: 'tis his terrible vain ideas about religion makes him fretful, I reckon. Well he may be hungry!"