“Ah, an old beauty! ‘Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.’ And who might this lady be?”
“Many a one was sweet upon her,” said Crockford. “I ain’t seen her, not to call seeing, for many a year. I don’t know about ashes, squire, except as they’re useful for scouring. And they say that beauty is but skin deep: but when I looks at an ’andsome lady I don’t think nothing of all that.”
“I didn’t know you were such an enthusiast, Crockford.”
“I don’t always understand, squire,” said Crockford, “the words the quality employ. Now and then they’ll have a kind of Greek or Latin that means just a simple thing. But I sits here hours on end, and I thinks a deal; and for a thing that pleases the eye I don’t think there’s nothing more satisfying than an ’andsome woman. I don’t say in my own class of life, for they ages fast, do the women; they don’t keep their appearance like you and me, if I may make so bold. But for a lady as has gone through a deal, and kep’ her looks, and got an air with her, that with riding in her own carriage behind a couple of ’andsome bays—I will say, squire, if I was to be had up before the magistrates for it—and you’re one yourself, and ought to know—and what I say is this: that Miss Aliciar from the great house there is just as fine a sight as a man would wish to see.”
“Miss Alicia!” cried poor Penton. The name was one he had not heard for long, and it seemed to bring back a flush of his youth which for a moment dazzled him. He burst out into a tremendous laugh after awhile. “You old blockhead!” he said. “You’re talking of Mrs. Russell Pentonon, my cousin, who hasn’t been called by that name these twenty years!”
“Twenty years,” said old Crockford, “is nothin’ squire, to a man like me. I knew her a baby, just as I knowed you. You’re both two infants to the likes of me. Bless you, I hear the bells ring for her christening and yours too. But she’s a fine, ’andsome woman, a-wheelin’ along in her carriage as if all the world belonged to her. I don’t think nothin’ of a husband that hain’t even a name of his own to bless himself with nor a penny to spend. It’s you and her that should have made a match; that’s what ought to have been, squire.”
“Unfortunately, you see,” aid Mr. Penton, “I have got a wife of my own.”
“But you hadn’t no wife nor her a husband in the old days,” said Crockford, meditatively, pausing to emphasize his words with the chip, chip of his hammer. “Dear a me! the mistakes that are in this life! One like me, as sits here hours on end, with naught afore him but the clouds flying and the wind blowing, learns a many things. There’s more mistakes than aught else in this life. Going downright wrong makes a deal of trouble, but mistakes makes more. For one as goes wrong there’s allays two or three decent folks as suffers. But mistakes is just like daily bread; they’re like the poor as is ever with us, accordin’ to the Scripture; they just makes a muddle of everything. It’s been going through my mind since ever I see Miss Aliciar in her chariot a-driving away, as fine as King Solomon in all his glory. The two young gentlemen, that was a sad sort of a thing, squire, but I don’t know as t’other is much better, the mistakes as some folks do make.”
“Crockford, you are growing old, and fond of talking,” said Mr. Penton, who had heard him out with a sort of angry patience. “Because one lets you go on and say your say, that’s not to make you a judge of your betters. Look here, here’s twopence for a glass of beer, but mind you keep your wisdom to yourself another day.”
“Thank ye, squire,” said Crockford. “I speak my mind in a general way, but I can hold my tongue as well as another when it ain’t liked. Remarks as is unpleasant, or as pricks like, going too near a sore place—”