“Ah, you women! you women! ’Tis always the same. A handsome spark will ever find you ready to give him a good word,” said Zachary, shaking his head.
“And are you so sure, Zachary, that a pretty wench can’t turn you round her fingers?” retorted the housekeeper, with a smile.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” quoted the sexton, shrewdly. “Give me the woman who knows how to brew good cider; grave-diggin’ all among bones and dust is terribly dry work, Mrs. Durdle.”
“Well, well, come round to the kitchen, man, though ’tis over early for your noonings,” said Durdle, with a laugh, “but, by-the-bye, what was the tale I heard in the village last night about the doings at Drybrook?”
“’Tis o’er true,” said Zachary, “though ’twas not the Canon Frome men that plundered there, but a troop of Colonel Lunsford’s horse that were serving in Prince Rupert’s forces. At Drybrook, when a poor fellow refused to give up a flitch o’ bacon to the foraging party, they struck him down and knocked out his eyes.”
“Good gracious, Zachary; now don’t you be telling that gruesome tale to Mistress Hilary, for she can’t abide hearing tell o’ such doings, though she do pretend to be so fond o’ war and fighting and glory and the rest. There’s not much glory in havin’ your eyes put out, I’ll warrant!”
Zachary lounged off towards the back premises, and Durdle was about to retire to the kitchen, and resume her gossip there, when she heard a knock at the front door.
“Now I do believe that’s Colonel Norton’s knock,” she muttered, bustling out in reply to the summons.
Her surmise was right enough; there he stood, booted and spurred, in all the glory of his gay attire, and with a sparkle in his dark eyes, which instantly banished from Durdle’s mind all Zachary’s warnings. She ushered him into the room she had just quitted, and though he had only asked for the Vicar his glance had so plainly bade her tell her mistress as well of his arrival, that she promptly sought Hilary, who had just finished making apple pasties in the kitchen.
“I’ll clap those in the oven, dearie,” said the housekeeper, “and do you doff your apron and tell the Vicar Colonel Norton is waiting to see him.”