“’Tisn’t as if I didn’t have somebody as did ought to be a-doin’ for I. There’s my son—a big, strong, hearty chap—my right hand he did use to be—there’s a deal to be done about this here place, ye know.”
“I do ’low there is,” agreed Baverstock absently.
“’Tisn’t only the public,” she continued, “tho’ I d’ ’low it be a bit hard for two women to have to manage all they menfolk—but there’s a bit of a farm to be seen to. Well, when I say a farm I do mean a couple o’ cows and a few pigs and chicken and that; and we do always grow our own spuds and greens, you know, and a few ranks o’ roots to help out wi’ for the cows in the winter. A man be wanted for all that kind o’ work, and it do seem hard as I should have to throw away my dibs to strangers when I mid have my own flesh and blood a-workin’ for nothin’.”
“It do,” agreed Baverstock, this time with more attention. “Why don’t your son do it then?” he inquired after a pause.
“Why?” repeated Mrs. Cluett in a tone of deep disgust. “Because he’ve a-been and gone and got married—that’s why, the unnat’ral fellow,” she added witheringly.
The young man surveyed her without hazarding a remark; those strange eyes of his remained as impassive as ever, but the corners of his mouth turned slightly upwards.
“I warn’t a-goin’ to let en bring his wife here,” continued the old woman. “I didn’t never fancy her, and ’twas again’ my will he did take up wi’ her. ‘You don’t bring her here,’ I says.—‘Then I don’t stop here,’ says he. ‘All right, my lad,’ says I, ‘ye can march!’ So he marched. He be a-workin’ over to new brewery now—down in the town.”
Baverstock apparently considered that this communication called for no comment; at all events he made none.
Mrs. Cluett, who had wrought herself up to the point of exposing the full extent of her grievances, was no whit abashed by his silence, however, and continued excitedly.
“The menfolk—there! they do seem to think a poor lone ’ooman fit for nothin’ but to make a laughin’ stock on. Dear heart alive, ’tis enough to drive a body silly! Us can’t seem to find a decent civil-spoke chap nowheres, can us, Alice? The minute a thing is not to their likin’ up they comes wi’ their sauce and their impudence, and off they goes.”