“Well, I say as every man has his own notions,” returned the other. “You might have a fancy for one place, as very likely I’d take agen, and, on the other hand, you seem to have some notion agen this ’ere place, as I think most suitable.”
“Well, ye’ll find out your mistake, I d’ ’low,” said Guppy unflinchingly. “Done pretty well wi’ eggs this year?”
“Yes, pretty well on the whole. We had to buy a few hundreds, but, as I told Mr.——”
“Buy ’em! Buy eggs! You must ha’ managed wonderful bad. I’ve a-been here nigh upon farty year, and never bought so much as one—not one. Dally! ’Twill come terr’ble expensive for Squire if ye do carry on things that way.”
“Something had to be done, you see,” cried Sanders, who was now beginning to be distinctly nettled. “You seem to have been such a stick-in-the-mud lot—there was hardly any game about the place that I could see when I come.”
“Oh! and weren’t there?” retorted John sarcastically. “Ye must ha’ poor eyes, Maister Sanders. There, ’twas what I did use to say to a cousin o’ Squire’s as used to come shooting here twenty-five years ago, and couldn’t hit a haystack. ‘There don’t seem to be anything to shoot, keeper,’ he’d say; and I’d answer back, ‘Ye must ha’ wonderful poor eyes, sir.’ Ho, ho! he were a stuck-up sort o’ gentleman as were always a-findin’ fault and a-pickin’ holes, but I mind I had a good laugh agen him once. ’Twas a terr’ble hot day, and we’d walked miles and miles, and I were a bit done-up at the end, and thankful for a sup o’ beer. And he comes up to I, and says, laughin’ nasty-like, ‘Well, Guppy, you don’t seem much of a walker. Now, I could go all day.’ ‘’E-es, sir,’ says I, ‘and so can a postman. I d’ ’low your bags ’ad much same weight at the end o’ your rounds.’”
Sanders vouchsafed no comment on this anecdote, and John, propping his stick against the paling, proceeded with much difficulty to climb over it, and to hobble from one pen to the other, stooping stiffly to inspect the young birds and the arrangements made for their comfort.
“They big speckly hens is too heavy for these here delicate little fellows,” he remarked. “Game hens is the best—’twas what I did always have. ’Tis more in nature as the game hens should make the best mothers to young pheasants. They be a poor-looking lot, Maister Sanders. I did use to have ’em a deal more for’ard at this time o’ year. What be feedin’ ’em on?”
“Now look ’ere, I’m not going to stand any more o’ this,” thundered the keeper, fairly losing his temper. “I’m not going to have you poking and prying about this place no longer. You’ve got past your work, and I’m doing it now. If the Squire’s satisfied, that’s all I need think about. If he isn’t, he can tell me so.”
“Ha! no man likes bein’ found fault with,” returned Guppy sententiously; “but sometimes ’tis for their own good. Now you take a word o’ advice from I, what was workin’ here afore you was born or thought of very like.”