‘O yis, your honour, an’ that’s the reason why I’ve come. I hope your honour ’ll think better on it, an’ not turn me an’ my poor children out o’ the farm, where my husband al’ys paid his rent as reglar as the day come.’
‘Nonsense! I should like to know what good it will do you and your children to stay on a farm and lose every farthing your husband has left you, instead of selling your stock and going into some little place where you can keep your money together. It is very well known to every tenant of mine that I never allow widows to stay on their husbands’ farms.’
‘O, Sir Christifer, if you would consider—when I’ve sold the hay, an’ corn, an’ all the live things, an’ paid the debts, an’ put the money out to use, I shall have hardly enough to keep our souls an’ bodies together. An’ how can I rear my boys and put ’em ’prentice? They must go for dey-labourers, an’ their father a man wi’ as good belongings as any on your honour’s estate, an’ niver threshed his wheat afore it was well i’ the rick, nor sold the straw off his farm, nor nothin’. Ask all the farmers round if there was a stiddier, soberer man than my husband as attended Ripstone market. An’ he says, “Bessie,” says he—them was his last words—“you’ll mek a shift to manage the farm, if Sir Christifer ’ull let you stay on.”’
‘Pooh, pooh!’ said Sir Christopher, Mrs. Hartopp’s sobs having interrupted her pleadings, ‘now listen to me, and try to understand a little common sense. You are about as able to manage the farm as your best milch cow. You’ll be obliged to have some managing man, who will either cheat you out of your money or wheedle you into marrying him.’
‘O, your honour, I was never that sort o’ woman, an’ nobody has known it on me.’
‘Very likely not, because you were never a widow before. A woman’s always silly enough, but she’s never quite as great a fool as she can be until she puts on a widow’s cap. Now, just ask yourself how much the better you will be for staying on your farm at the end of four years, when you’ve got through your money, and let your farm run down, and are in arrears for half your rent; or, perhaps, have got some great hulky fellow for a husband, who swears at you and kicks your children.’
‘Indeed, Sir Christifer, I know a deal o’ farmin,’ an’ was brought up i’ the thick on it, as you may say. An’ there was my husband’s great-aunt managed a farm for twenty year, an’ left legacies to all her nephys an’ nieces, an’ even to my husband, as was then a babe unborn.’
‘Psha! a woman six feet high, with a squint and sharp elbows, I daresay—a man in petticoats. Not a rosy-cheeked widow like you, Mrs. Hartopp.’
‘Indeed, your honour, I never heard of her squintin’, an’ they said as she might ha’ been married o’er and o’er again, to people as had no call to hanker after her money.’
‘Ay, ay, that’s what you all think. Every man that looks at you wants to marry you, and would like you the better the more children you have and the less money. But it is useless to talk and cry. I have good reasons for my plans, and never alter them. What you have to do is to take the best of your stock, and to look out for some little place to go to, when you leave The Hollows. Now, go back to Mrs. Bellamy’s room, and ask her to give you a dish of tea.’