"Attend to your own, Cripps, attend to your own. I beg your pardon for not helping you. But that you can do for yourself, I dare say. I am trying to think out something. I used to be quick; I am very slow now."
Cripps made a little face at this, to show that the ways of his betters had good right to be beyond him; and then he stood upon his sturdy bowed legs, and turned a quick corner of eye at the door, in fear of any fasting influence, and seeing nothing of the kind, with pleasure laid hold of a large knife and fork.
"Lay about you, Cripps, my friend; lay about you to your utmost." So said Mr. Overshute, himself refusing everything.
"Railly now, I dunno, your Worship, how to get on, all a-ating by myself. Some folk can, and some breaks down at it. I must have somebody to ate with me—so be it was only now a babby, or a dog."
"I thank you for the frank comparison, Cripps. Well, help me, if you must—ah, I see you can carve."
"I am better at the raw mate, sir; but I can make shift when roasted. Butcher Numbers my brother, your Worship—but perhaps you never heered on him?"
"Oh yes, I know, Cripps. A highly respectable thriving man he is too. All your family thrive, and everybody speaks so well of them. Why, look at Leviticus! They tell me he has three hundred pigs!"
Like most men who have the great gift of gaining good will and popularity, Russel Overshute loved a bit of gossip about his neighbours.
"Your Worship," said Cripps, disappointing him of any new information, "pigs is out of my way altogether. When I was a young man of tender years, counteracted I was for to carry a pig. Three pounds twelve shillings and four pence he cost me, in less than three-quarters of a mile of road; and squeak, squeak, all the way, as if I was a-killing of him, and not he me. Seemeth he smelled some apples somewhere, and he went through a chaney clock, and a violin, and a set of first-born babby-linen for Squire Corser's daughter; grown up now she is, your Worship must a met her riding. And that was not the worst of it nother——"
"Well, Cripps, you must tell me another time. It was terribly hard upon you. But, my friend, the gentleman who lives here will be back for his hat, when the clock strikes two. Cap and gown off, when the clock strikes two. From two until five he walks fifteen miles, whatever the state of the weather is."