"Rheumatism in the legs. He could hardly get out of bed this morning he was so stiff."
"Eh, dear! that's a bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in this world; the most missed are the first taken."
"I wonder if that's Miss Elisabeth there," said Mrs. Bateson, catching sight of a dark-robed figure in the distance. "I notice she's taken to go to church regular now Miss Farringdon isn't here to look after her. How true it is, 'When the cat's away the mice will play!'" Worship according to the methods of that branch of the Church Militant established in these kingdoms was regarded by Mrs. Bateson as a form of recreation—harmless, undoubtedly, but still recreation.
Mrs. Hankey shook her head. "No—that isn't her; she can't be out of church yet. They don't go in till eleven." And she shook her head disapprovingly.
"Eleven's too late, to my thinking," agreed Mrs. Bateson.
"So it is; you never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Bateson. Half-past ten is the Lord's time—or so it used to be when I was a girl."
"And a very good time too! Gives you the chance of getting home and seeing to the dinner properly after chapel. At least, that is to say, if the minister leaves off when he's finished, which is more than you can say of all of them; if he doesn't, there's a bit of a scrimmage to get the dinner cooked in time even now, unless you go out before the last hymn. And I never hold with that somehow; it seems like skimping the Lord's material, as you may say."
"So it does. It looks as if the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches had choked the good seed in a body's heart."
"In which case it looks what it is not," said Mrs. Bateson; "for nine times out of ten it means nothing worse than wanting to cook the potatoes, so as the master sha'n't have no cause for grumbling, and to boil the rice so as it sha'n't swell in the children's insides. But that's the way with things; folks never turn out to be as bad as you thought they were when you get to know their whys and their wherefores; and many a poor soul as is put down as worldly is really only anxious to make things pleasant for the master and the children."
"Miss Elisabeth's mourning is handsome, I don't deny," said Mrs. Hankey, reverting to a more interesting subject than false judgments in the abstract; "but she don't look well in it—those pale folks never do justice to good mourning, in my opinion. It seems almost a pity to waste it on them."