"More partickler," continued Roger, warmly, and striking his fist on the wooden table till the tea-cups rattled, "more partickler as Mr. Jack be Mr. Raleigh's own brother, and my lady belongs to Mr. Raleigh if ever she belonged to anybody; and no one can't deny as it's been my intention to put 'em together this four year come harvest time. No one can't deny it, no one."
"True, lad, true," grunted Peter sympathetically, while his wife cunningly seized the opportunity to interrupt again by appearing to enter warmly into the rat-catcher's disturbed feelings.
"And to think of his precious baby," sniffed Mrs. Haxtell, pouring herself out another cup of tea; "to think of the dear lamb, with no mother and not much father to speak of, passing of his innocent childhood without the woman's care his father ought to give him. I've no patience with such neglect, though I'm sure I hope I've done my best by the child, as I thought to myself only this mornin' when I saw him stuffin' his precious fat cheeks with green plums. It ain't every one would let a child do that!"
Lily Eliza became restive at this point.
"Tell about Mr. Jack, Muster Brill," she urged timidly.
"Daughter," said old Peter, sternly, "it ain't the part of a well-meanin', God-fearin' lass to ask such a question, and if you worn't your mother's own daughter you wouldn't have such sinful desires to ask 'em."
In her anxiety to hear the rest of the story, the landlady allowed this backhanded attack on her morals to pass unnoticed, and Roger began afresh. "Well, up they comes together, talkin' and laughin' quite friendly like, and my lady says to him, she says, 'Here's the rats you said I was to have killed,' she says, 'and isn't it a dear little dog?' she says. So I says to her, 'Aye, it be a good pup; it's killed fourteen since breakfast,' and I seemed to offend her like, for up she gets from where she'd been patting him, and she looks at Mr. Jack all in a blaze, and she says all angry like, 'That's what you call sport, is it?' she says. 'Mr. Digby wouldn't call it sport,' she says."
"No more he wouldn't," said both the women simultaneously.
"That's true enough," said Roger, slowly, "but Lady Relton, she bain't the smirking soft kind o' woman what likes to spare the rat and spoil the corn, and I can't rightly make out what's come over her to-day. She didn't seem herself to-day, not anyhow, and she seemed to take a pleasure in quarrelin' over everything Mr. Jack said, and then she laughed of him, she did. It worn't like my lady, it worn't, to talk soft stuff about killin' rats; that be more like t' other one what come after Mr. Raleigh last springtime, the one what had saucer eyes, and pretended to be fond of the child, with her nasty clingin', pretendin' ways."
The last words were said with biting contempt, and the women sat silent and sipped their tea approvingly. But old Peter had different views concerning the "other one" alluded to, and he again made the effort to interrupt.