Meanwhile the old women were in lively converse. The black strip round Jack’s leg had started them; they diverged to the scandal of Thomas Leveridge being away when his child died, and not being present at the funeral.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Mrs. Weldon, “men are monsters. They’ve no more feelings than have traction engines. I wish we could get along without them.”
“But Jack?”
“Ah! Jack is a good son. I’m not speaking of lads, but of married men. There is poor Mrs. Leveridge, left without a shilling; and whatever she would have done had not Jack caught her a rabbit, I do not know. It all comes of politics.”
“You’re right there,” said the woman from the toll-gate; “when they get politics into their heads, it’s worse than beer. They can get the better of liquor with a good sleep, but of politics”—she shook her head and sighed. “I’ll tell y’ what it is,” continued Mrs. Weldon. “It’s our own faults that the men get that rampageous. We give in to them too much. My husband never went after ale or politics; but then I taught him his duty from the beginning.”
“That’s it—it all comes of beginning well,” said the toll-gate mourner. “It’s the same with dogs and with poultry. Lor’ bless you, if I didn’t take the stick to my cochin-china, he’d be all over the kitchen.”
“I’d never advise any girl to marry,” said Mrs. Weldon.
“Nor I neither,” was the reply; “it’s a pity they won’t take advice—they are that wilful.”
Both couples were interrupted in their respective conversations by a rattle of wheels, shouts, a waving of colours, and up came a light cart occupied by a couple of men, one driving, both vociferating, one brandishing a whip, the other waving a parti-coloured sheet attached to a stick. The cart was drawn by a donkey with coloured rosettes, and was urged forward by the whip, at the end of which was a favour, accentuated with a bunch of thorns. The donkey, stung by the thorns, frightened by the yells, was galloping, and the banner was streaming in the air.
“Hurrah! Vote for Popjoy!” yelled the man with the flag as he flourished it over his head, and, swinging round the corner, the donkey came almost against the bearer with the coffin, and swerved so suddenly that the banner-bearer lost his balance, and was precipitated from the cart into the road, and fell at the feet of Jack Weldon.