“Out he must go,” said the Squire. “He had notice to quit at Lady Day, and on Lady Day he goes and into no cottage of mine shall he come.”
Whither did he go? He wandered seeking shelter; every house was refused, till he came to John French.
A few hours later, Mrs. French exclaimed: “John! you don’t mean to tell me that you have let those good-for-naughts—the Slouches—into your cottage?”
“I have, mother, they cannot lie in the road under a hedge, and they were turned out to-day. Timothy has, at last, found an occupation—he is taken on to break stones for the road. He cannot go wrong in that. It is what any fool can do. As to the cottage, it is unoccupied, and has been for a twelvemonth. I have let him move his few sticks of furniture into it, and he is to pay me a weekly rent of a shilling. There is a bit of garden——”
“Which he will neglect.”
“Sela kept the garden where they were before, and she will attend to this. She has poultry.”
“Well—may you not regret it.”
So Sela and Tim and the children were admitted into French’s cottage, and with them moved a great number of cocks and hens, geese and ducks. Sela was a clever woman with fowls. Indeed, it was through her poultry that she had maintained herself and children, and had paid the rent. She sold eggs to the regrater every week, and spring chickens were readily purchased by the gentry around.
When it was known that the Luppencotts were given a new spell of occupation in the neighbourhood, that neighbourhood sighed, and said with one voice, “Well, we did think we were quit of Slouch, but we should have been sorry to lose Sela.”