As he emptied potato peelings into a barrel, there came to the master of this flowery garden a wild and untidy brown maid, easily to be recognized as the runaway Susan.
"Pleace, Uncle Phil, aunt says if you've done them 'taters she'd like 'em to see the fire, if us be going to have dinner come presently."
"They'm done," he said. "I be bringing of 'em."
A voice like a guinea-hen's came through the open door.
"Now, master, if you've finished looking at the sky, I'll thank you to fetch a dollop o' peat. An' be them fowls killed yet? You know what Mrs. Swain said last Saturday? Yours be the bestest fowls as ever come into Plymouth Market, Hephzibah,' she said. 'I'd go miles for such poultry; an' you sell 'em too cheap most times; but if your husband would only kill 'em a thought sooner, to improve their softness——' 'He shall do it, ma'am,' I said; but well I knowed all the time I might so soon speak to a pig in his sty as you—such a lazy rogue you be."
"I'll kill 'em after dinner—plenty of time."
"'Plenty of time'! Always your wicked, loafing way. Put off—put off—where's that gal? Go an' sweep the best bedroom, Susan. 'Plenty of time.' You'll come to eternity presently—with nothing to show for it. Then, when they ax what you've been doing with your time, you'll cut a pretty cheap figure, Philip Weekes."
Her husband exhibited a startling indifference to this attack; but it was the indifference that an artilleryman displays to the roar and thunder of ordnance. His wife talked all day long—often half the night also; and her language was invariably hyperbolic and sensational. Nobody ever took her tragic diction seriously, least of all her husband. His position in the home circle was long since defined. He did a great deal of women's work, suffered immense indignities with philosophic indifference, and brightened into some semblance of content and satisfaction once a week. This was upon Saturday nights, when his partner invariably slept at Plymouth. Her husband and she were hucksters; but since, among its other disabilities, Lydford was denied the comfort of a market, they had to seek farther for customers, and it was to Plymouth that they took their produce.
Every Friday Mr. Weekes harnessed his pony and drove a little cart from Lydford into Bridgetstowe, through certain hamlets. He paid a succession of visits, and collected from the folk good store of eggs, butter, rabbits, ducks, honey, apples and other fruit, according to the season. His own contributions to the store were poultry and cream. He had one cow, and kept a strain of large Indian game fowls which were noted amongst the customers of Mrs. Weekes. On Saturday the market woman was driven to Lydford Station with her stores, and after a busy day in Plymouth, she slept with a married niece there, and returned to her home again on the following morning.
This programme had continued for nearly forty years. On rare occasions Philip Weekes himself went to market; but, as his wife declared, "master was not a good salesman," and she never let him take her place at the stall if she could help it.