“Eh! she's a good enough lass. Not much of a manager, brother Tony. Too much of a thinker, I reckon. She's got a temper of her own too. I'm a bit hurt, brother Tony, about that other girl. She must leave London, if she don't alter. It's flightiness; that's all. You mustn't think ill of poor Dahly. She was always the pretty one, and when they know it, they act up to it: she was her mother's favourite.”
“Ah! poor Susan! an upright woman before the Lord.”
“She was,” said the farmer, bowing his head.
“And a good wife,” Anthony interjected.
“None better—never a better; and I wish she was living to look after her girls.”
“I came through the churchyard, hard by,” said Anthony; “and I read that writing on her tombstone. It went like a choke in my throat. The first person I saw next was her child, this young gal you call Rhoda; and, thinks I to myself, you might ask me, I'd do anything for ye—that I could, of course.”
The farmer's eye had lit up, but became overshadowed by the characteristic reservation.
“Nobody'd ask you to do more than you could,” he remarked, rather coldly.
“It'll never be much,” sighed Anthony.
“Well, the world's nothing, if you come to look at it close,” the farmer adopted a similar tone.