"Nay, I don't know. Why should he leave his job for a thing like that? I expect if he wur to come home they'd stop his pay, and I hope Tom is noan such a fool as to lose his pay, but there, there's no tellin'."
In spite of all this, however, Mrs. Pollard was in no slight degree elated. She knew that Tom was the talk of Brunford, and that special articles were devoted to him in the Brunford newspapers.
"He will be sure to come home," said Ezekiel Pollard to her one night after supper; "when a lad's done a job like that, he's sure to have a bit of a holiday."
"Maybe, and I suppose tha'll be showing him around as though he wur a prize turkey. Ay, but I am glad about this drinking order."
"Why?"
"Because else all th' lads in the town 'ud be wanting to treat our Tom; they 'd be proud to be seen wi' him, and they'd make him drunk afore he know'd where he wur. Our Tom never could sup much beer wi'out it goin' to his head."
"Our Tom has give up that sort o' thing," replied Ezekiel.
"How dost tha' know?"
"I do know, and that's enough," replied Ezekiel, thinking of Tom's last letter, which, by the way, he had never shown to his wife.
I am not going to try to describe Tom's feelings when he was told that he had been recommended for the D.C.M.