She smiled. "I always feel I can trust you with him at any rate, Sir Josiah."
"A good woman that, a sensible woman, couldn't have found a better," Sir Josiah said as nurse wheeled the baby carriage away. "And you were saying just now, Markabee?"
"I were saying a terribul pernicious thing is this ivy working with its little fingers on they old walls as du support it, tearing and tearing, wonderful like the fingers of Abram Lestwick's, I du remember."
"Ah poor fellow!" said Sir Josiah.
"Mad!" said Markabee, "like his mother were afore him—mad—and mad in love moreover."
"Indeed!"
"Wi' the prettiest maid in these parts, old Mother Hanson's grand-darter, sir."
"Little Betty Hanson?" said Sir Josiah—"whom my daughter-in-law Lady Kathleen sent to me months and months ago, and to think that poor mad fellow loved her. But she's married now, Markabee, and married well—married to a young fellow who works for me, a lad named Cope! I'm paying him six pounds a week, Markabee, and he's worth it, a hard working honest lad. I had tea with them in their little house and a prettier little hostess you never saw. But if you'll believe me, Markabee, an arrant little flirt, with those pretty eyes of hers——"
"Her mother were the same," said Markabee. "All wimmen more or less be the same—specially when they du have fine eyes as Betty had."
"Why I don't know that you aren't right Markabee, and yet not all, not all women Markabee, there is one——"