“Don’t be a goose, Ursula. They’ve got to keep their hands in, a-cooking, haven’t they? and when things be made, you can’t waste ’em nor give ’em the pigs. They’ve got to be ate, haven’t they?” demanded Mrs Tabitha, in tones of battle; and Ursula subsided without attempting a defence.
“What say you, Tom?” asked Roger, looking at his brother.
Mr Thomas Hall, apparently, did not dare to say anything. He glanced deprecatingly at his domestic tyrant, and murmured a few words, half swallowed in the utterance, of which “all agree” were the only distinguishable syllables.
“Oh, he’ll say as I say,” responded Tabitha unblushingly. “There’s no man in the Weald knows his duty better than Thomas Hall; it’d be a mercy if he’d sometimes do it.”
Mr Thomas Hall’s look of meek appeal said “Don’t I?” in a manner which was quite pathetic.
“Seems to me,” said Ralph Final, the young landlord of the White Hart, “that if we were all to put of a hat or a bowl such moneys as we could one and another of us afford by the year, for Mistress Pardue and the childre—such as could give money, look you—and them that couldn’t should say what they would give, it’d be as plain a way as any.”
“Well said, Ralph!” pronounced Mrs Tabitha, who took the lead as usual. “I’ll give my maids’ cast-off clothes for the childre, the elder, I mean, such as ’ll fit ’em; the younger must go for Patience and Charity. And I’ll let ’em have a quart of skim milk by the day, as oft as I have it to spare; and eggs if I have ’em. And Thomas ’ll give ’em ten shillings by the year. And I shouldn’t marvel if I can make up a kirtle or a hood for Collet by nows and thens, out of some gear of my own.”
Mr Thomas Hall being looked at by the Synod to see if he assented, confirmed the statement of his arbitrary Tabitha by a submissive nod.
“I’ll give two nobles by the year,” said Ralph, “and a peck of barley by the quarter, and a cask of beer at Christmas.”
“I will give them a sovereign by the year,” said Roger Hall, “and half a bale of cloth from the works, that Master suffers me to buy at cost price.”