“Well, think of them fillies if you can; there’s business to be done if I can get ’em to suit.”
So in marched Harry, and tapped at the kitchen window, and nodded and smiled to Mrs. Tarnley.
“So you’re all sick down here, I’m told; but sickness is better than sadness. That’s all I can say, lass,” said Harry, pacing, much in his usual way, into the kitchen, and clapping his big hand down on Mildred’s shoulder.
“Sick, sore, and sorry we be, sir. Your brother’s not that long buried that there should be no sadness in the Grange, his own house that was, and his widow’s that is—sickness may well be better than sadness, but ’taint turn about wi’ them here, but one and t’other, both together. And that slut upstairs, Miss Dogger, if you please, out of the scullery into the bed-chamber, she’s no more use to me than the cock at the top o’ Carwell steeple. I never knew such times in Carwell Grange; I’m wore off my old feet—I can’t stan’ it long, and I wish twenty times in a day I was quiet at last in my grave.”
“A gruntin’ horse and a grumblin’ wife, they say, lasts long. Never you fear, you won’t die this time, old girl, and I wouldn’t know the Grange if you wasn’t here. ’Twill all be right again soon, I warrant—no wind blows long at the highest, ye know, and we’ll hear what the doctor says just now.”
“Hoot! what can the doctor say but just the old thing? The leech to the physic and God to the cure, and death will do as God allows, and sickness shows us what we are, and all fears the grave as the child does the dark. I don’t know much good he’s doin’, or much he did for Master Charles—not but he’s as good as another, and better than many a one, maybe—but he costs a deal o’ money, and only Lady Wyndale came over here yesterday—poorly though she is, and not able to get out o’ her coach—and saw Mrs. Crane, and lent a fifty-pun note to keep all straight till the young lady, please God, may be able to look about her, and see after ’em herself, we’d a bin at a sore pinch before the week was out. Pity’s good, but help’s better. ’Tis well in this miserly world there’s a kind one left here and there, that wouldn’t let kindred want in the midst of plenty. There’s Squire Harry o’ Wyvern and his own little grandson lyin’ up in the cradle there, and look at you, Master Harry. I wonder you hadn’t the thought.”
Harry laughed, perhaps, the least degree awkwardly.
“Why, chick-a-biddy——” began Harry.
“I’m none o’ yer chick-a-biddies. I’m old Mildred Tarnley, o’ the Grange o’ Carwell, that’s in the service o’ the family—her and hers—many a long year, and I speaks my mind, and I shouldn’t like the family to be talked of as it will for meanness. If there’s a want o’ money here in times of sickness, ’tis a shame!”
“Well, ye know there’s no want, but the Governor’s riled just now, and he’ll come round again; and as for me, I’m as poor a dog as is in the parish. Take me and turn me round and round, and what more am I than just a poor devil that lives by horses, and not always the price of a pot o’ stout in my pocket—