He shook hands with zest.
"And how fend tha noo, Master Joel?" he asked.
"Gaily," replied Joel in an off-hand manner.
"He's nobbut very sweemish," interposed the good-wife, with just a touch of malice in her tones. "He wants cheering up a bit."
Red Geordie slapped his thigh and laughed.
"It's the lassies he's missing," he said, "mistress, mistress, thoo should have 'ticed up a posey o' bonny faces for him to look at."
"To the Girdlestone in this weather!" she replied.
"If thoo said, 'Here's a fine bird worth the picking,' they'd have come like a flock of starlings after a bone, aye, would they."
Joel turned away with a haughty shrug of his shoulders, and Red Geordie sniggered, in no way disconcerted.
"Well, what's been adoing down-by?" asked the dame, anxious not to offend her lordly guest.