Here the irreverent group in the road began to nudge each other and chuckle afresh; Chaffey sat down suddenly on the top of his ladder.
“What I d’ say, neighbours, is,” he began, “what my notion be—if ye’d give over sniggering for a moment,” he cried with gathering ire, “I could make it plain to ye.”
But they wouldn’t give over; the merriment increased instead of diminishing, and at last Daniel, exclaiming that he would be dalled if he stood it any longer, leaped to the ground, and, dashing into his house, bolted the door behind him.
His friends, trooping into the little garden, serenaded him with a ballad which they thought suitable to his case, and having goaded him into declaring he would come out in a minute and break their heads for them, withdrew in good order and pursued their interrupted course to the allotments.
Daniel waited until the last heavy footfall had died away, the last battered hat brim disappeared, and then came forth with a vengeful expression on his usually good-tempered face. He picked up the hammer and nails which he had scattered in his flight, shouldered his ladder and carried it round to the little shed in the rear, and then came back slowly to resume his labours in the garden.
“She be a good ’un,” he muttered to himself, “let ’em say what they like, she be.”
He paused to uplift and secure a tuft of golden rod which had fallen across the path.
“I never did take so mich notice of her eyes,” he said to himself. “They bain’t so crooked as that comes to—they can see well enough, and that’s the p’int.”
He plucked out a tuft of groundsel which had hitherto escaped his vigilant eye.
“There’s nothin’ so much amiss wi’ her shape neither—I d’ ’low I’d sooner have a nice little comfortable round-about woman nor a great gawky faymale like a zowel or a speaker. If she’s pluffy, she’s sprack, an’ that’s the p’int.”