“Where he had much better have stayed—eh, Luke?” said the farmer. “He does no good but idle about here.”
“Idle, indeed!” cried Mrs Portlock, taking up the cudgels, rather indignantly, on the young man’s behalf. “It might be idling if it was Luke Ross here, but Mr Cyril Mallow’s a gentleman and a gentleman’s son, and he has a right to work when he likes and leave off when he likes.”
“Oh! has he?” said the Churchwarden, smiling at their visitor, as much as to say, ‘Now, just you listen.’ “Well, I’m not a learned man, like Luke Ross here, who has got his Bible at his tongue’s end.”
“As every man who calls himself a good man ought to,” said Mrs Portlock, tartly. “Sage!”
“Yes, aunt,” came from the next room, where the speaker could hear every word.
“Tell them to take the dinner in directly. And, for my part, Joseph, I think if you’d read your Bible a little more o’ Sundays you’d be a better man.”
“You wouldn’t like me so well if I was a better man, old lady,” he laughed; “but, as I was going to say, when I used to read of such things I got it into my head that the first specimen of a man as was made was a working man, to till the ground, and not idle and loaf about, and eat the fruit and shoot the rabbits in the Garden of Eden.”
“For shame, father, to talk in that way!” cried the lady. “And I wonder that you speak so disrespectfully of Mr Cyril Mallow. For my part, I think he’s a very nice, gentlemanly young fellow, and it’s too bad for people to be always sneering about him as they are.”
“And, for my part,” said the Churchwarden, good-humouredly, “I’m a bit of a Radical, and don’t believe in taking off your hat to a man because he happens to have a few thousand pounds more than one’s got oneself. If he’s a wonderful clever chap, with more brains than I’ve got, why, I do look up to him; but I’m not going down on my knees to a set of folks who yawn through their lives, doing nothing, except telling you by word and look that they are a better class of people than you are; and as for Master Cyril Mallow, he’s a well-built, strapping young fellow, who can talk well, and shoot well, but if he had happened to be my sod, instead of old Mallow’s, I’d have licked him into a different shape to what he’s in now, ay, and his brother too, or I’d have known the reason why. Dinner in, my lass? That’s well. Come along, Luke. Tchah! nonsense! you shall stay. You can tell the old man your reasons better when you’ve got a bit of roast beef under your waistcoat, and some of my ale. Why, Sage, lass, what ails you? Your face is as white as a bit o’ dough.”
“Oh, nothing, uncle, nothing,” she replied, forcing a smile, as she hurried to a tall press to get out a napkin for their visitor, and soon after they were seated at the hospitable meal, which was more bounteous on a market-day, the nearness of the farm to the town making it always probable that the Churchwarden might bring up a friend.