“Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock of sheep.”
“The vicar—Mr Basil—is kind to the poor, is he not?” asked Valentine, forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman’s bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.
“Our paason! ould varmint—a gives all the coals and blankets at Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders’ money, I wants to knaw?”
“What money was that?”
“Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor anybody else as ever I heard tell on.”
“But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?”
“A vine lot: it bean’t for such as we.”
“You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now, that little grocer’s shop where they sell—”
“You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers—her will get notice to quit zum o’ these yer days.”
“But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by.”