"Ye can think too sooin, as th' saying is," put in Nanny. "Th' Lean Man is like them crawly hundred-legs 'at ye find i' th' walls—th' more bits ye cut him into, th' more bits there is to wriggle—each wi' bits o' legs of its own, an' all, to carry it into mischief."
"Ay, but they say he wears a daunted look," put in the slattern, stirring the peats with her foot. "Jonas Feather at th' Bull see'd him riding through Marshcotes awhile back, an' he niver stayed for a wet-your-whistle—just rode wi' slouched shoulders, an' a sort o' looseness i' his knees, an' ivery now an' then a speedy backard look ower his shoulders, as if——"
Nanny turned suddenly, a queer smile pinching her thin old face. "As if th' Dog war after him," she finished. "I knew how 'twould be—ay, I knew."
"Well, I niver see'd Barguest myseln, an' I doan't fancy I iver shall," said Hiram drily. "But there's a change come to th' Lean Man, for sure, an' iverybody is beginning to tak notice o' 't. Sometimes he's his old self, an' sometimes he fair dithers—an' by that token he's i' Marshcotes this morn, for I catched a sight of his back as I cam up th' hill."
"I may hev my own opinion o' th' Lean Man," broke in Bet Earnshaw, "but my man Earnshaw hes part work fro' Wildwater this winter, an' there'll mebbe be another spell i' store for him, now 'at there's so mich walling to be done on th' new intaken land."
"Earnshaw get work? Why, whativer would he do wi' 't, if he got it?" cried Hiram, with well-feigned amazement. "He'd drop it, I'm thinking, same as if 'twere a ferret, for fear it 'ud bite him."
"Now, Hiram—" began Bet.
But Hiram looked at her with large and fatherly contempt over the edge of his pewter, and his low deep voice vanquished the other's thinner note. "Well, th' young Maister is weel out o' what chanced to-neet at Marsh," he went on. "Yond bother all came of his marlaking wi' a Ratcliffe wench, an' I said to myseln afore iver th' Ratcliffes come. 'There'll be a judgment follow on sich light ways,' I says."
"A bonnie un tha art to talk," said Nanny. "What's this about thee an' Martha?"
Hiram fidgetted from one foot to the other. "What should there be?" he said.