"Living is a weariness that men and women bear with unanimous patience, Mrs. Christie—aches and pains included."
"So it may be, sir. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. A week ago I could not have thought the pleasure it would be to-day to see the sun, and the pretty things in flower, and my boy going out with his color-box. And not as much physic have you given me, Mr. Carnegie, as would lie on a penny-piece."
Bessie Fairfax laughed as they rode on, and said, "Nobody changes. I should be tempted to give Mrs. Christie something horribly nasty for her ingratitude."
"Nobody changes," echoed the doctor. "She will be at her drugs again before the month is out."
A little beyond the wheelwright's, Mr. Carnegie pulled up at a spot by the wayside where an itinerant tinker sat in the shade with his brazier hot, doing a good stroke of work on the village kettles and pots: "Eh, Gampling, here you are again! They bade me at home look out for you and tell you to call. There is a whole regiment of cripples to mend."
"Then let 'em march to Hampton, sir—they'll get back some time this side o' Christmas," said the tinker, with a surly cunning glance out of the corner of his eye. "Your women's so mighty hard to please that I'm not meaning to call again; I prefers to work where I gives satisfaction."
"I did hear something of a pan new bottomed to mend a hole in its side; but what is that amongst friends? Mistakes will occur in the best-regulated businesses."
"You're likely to know, sir—there's a sight o' folks dropping off quite unaccountable else. I'm not dependent on one nor another, and what I says I stands to: I'll never call at Dr. Carnegie's back door again while that Irish lass is about his kitchen; she's give me the rough side of her tongue once, but she won't do it no more."
"Then good-day to you, Gampling; I can't part with the Irish lass at your price."
A sturdy laborer came along the road eating a hunch of bread and cheese. Mr. Carnegie asked him how his wife did. The answer was crabbed: "She's never naught to boast on, and she's allus worse after a spiritchus visit: parson's paying her one now. Can you tell me, Mr. Carnegie, sir, why parson chooses folk's dinner-time to drop in an' badger 'em about church? Old parson never did." He did not stay to have his puzzle elucidated, but trudged heavily on.