“Be sure I do. He’s a-bed this morrow.”
“I have my doubts if there’ll be many tears shed in Staplehurst,” said Mistress Final, laughing, as she went past with a plate of biscuit-bread, which, to judge from the receipt for making it, must have been very like our sponge cake.
“He’s none so much loved of his neighbours,” remarked Nicholas White, who kept a small ironmonger’s shop, to which he added the sale of such articles as wood, wicker-work, crockery, and musical instruments.
The shorter and livelier of the travellers spoke for the first time.
“Pray you, who is this greatly beloved master?”
John Fishcock, the butcher, replied. “His name is Benden, and the folks be but ill-affected to him for his hard ways and sorry conditions.”
“Hard!—in what manner, trow?”
“Nay, you’d best ask my neighbour here, whose landlord he is.”
“And who’d love a sight better to deal with his mistress than himself,” said Collet, answering the appeal. “I say not he’s unjust, look you, but he’s main hard, be sure. A farthing under the money, or a day over the time, and he’s no mercy.”
“Ah, the mistress was good to poor folks, bless her!” said Banks.