“A ’ooman what come down to take her husband’s place along o’ his bein’ a bit drinky to-day an’ not able to work. She did come to the maister so bold as a lion, an’ she did say, ‘Here be I, so well able to do a day’s work as he’—didn’t she?”
“Ah!” put in Joe, raising his head from a mug of cider which had just found its way into his hands, “an’ when she did find she couldn’t get on so fast as us menfolks, she says to maister, ‘I can do two days’ work then,’ says she, ‘to make up for it.’ That’s a ’ooman!” With a further shake of the head as a tribute to the absent Mrs Crumpler, Joe applied himself to the cider-mug again, but this last remark was taken up by several of his neighbours.
“That’s a ’ooman, indeed,” they said, and every man whose better-half chanced to be in attendance looked reproachfully at her as he spoke.
“Well, I’m sure,” exclaimed one irate matron, catching up her empty basket, “she must be a wonderful faymale whoever she mid be, but I’d like to know who looks after the house while she be traipsin’ about i’ the fields. Some folks has one notion o’ dooty an’ some has another. To my mind it’s more a ’ooman’s duty to see to things at home—to get her husband’s dinner an’ that—”
“There, ’tis just the very thing what she’ve gone home-along to do,” shouted Bill.
“An’ so tired as the creature was, too, wasn’t she?” said somebody.
“Ah! that was she,” rejoined somebody else. “There she was fair wore out. The perspiration was a-pourin’ down her face. ‘Sit down an’ rest, do, my dear,’ says I. ‘No,’ says she, ‘I must run home so quick as I can to get my Jarge’s dinner.”
“Jarge!” said Mrs Frost, with withering scorn, “Jarge! It’ll be that poor little down-trod Mrs Crumpler they be all keepin’ up such a charm about,” she explained contemptuously to her neighbour with the basket. “Mrs Crumpler—that poor little plain-faytured—”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” interrupted Bill; “I d’ ’low Jarge do think Sally hasn’t her match i’ th’ world.”
“‘You be a plucky little ’ooman,’” chanted old Joe, gazing maliciously at the crestfallen assemblage of matrons; “them was Farmer Ellery’s words: a plucky little ’ooman. Be there any cider left—?”