Dimly the old host saw that he was floundering upon delicate ground. "My doctrine is," said he, "let things alone and they'll come right in the end."
Bideabout moved uneasily. He winced at the reference to Iver. But what he now really was anxious to arrive at was the matter of money left by Mrs. Verstage to Mehetabel.
"Now," said Simon, looking after the serving-maid, as she left the bar, when she had deposited the tumbler beside Bideabout. "Now, my old woman was amazin' set against that girl. Why—I can't think. She's a good girl when let alone. But Sanna never would let her alone. She were ever naggin' at her; so that she upset the poor thing's nerve. She broke the taypot and chucked the beer to the pigs, but that was because she were flummeried wi' my old woman going on at her so. She said to me she really couldn't bear to think how I'd go on after she were gone. I sed, to comfort her, that I knowed Polly would do her best. 'She'll do the best she can for herself,' answered Sanna, as sharp as she said 'Yes, I will,' when we was married. I don't know what her meanin' was. You won't believe it, but it's true what I'm going to tell you. She said to me, did Susanna, 'Simon there was Mary Toft, couldn't die, because there were wild-fowl feathers in her bed. They had to take her off the four-poster and get another feather-bed, before she could die right off. Now,' said Sanna, 'it's somethin' like that with me. I ain't got wild-bird feathers under me, but there's a wild fowl in the house, and that's Polly. So long as she's here die I can't, and die I won't.' 'Well, old woman,' sed I, if that's all, to accommodate you, I'll send Polly to her mother,' and so I did—and she died right on end, peaceable."
"But Polly is here."
"Oh, yes—when Sanna were gone—we couldn't do wi'out her. She knowed that well enough and came back—runnin' like a long dog, and very good and thoughtful it was of her. Most young wimen ain't considerate like that."
This was all wide of the subject that engrossed the interest of Bideabout, and had induced him to revisit the Ship. As the host made no allusion to the topic, the Broom-Squire plunged into the matter, headforemost.
"Joe Filmer," said he, "called me back. I didn't wish to come in and trouble you now. But Joe said as how you wanted to speak to me about some money as your wife had left with you for my Matabel; and I thought it might be botherin' your mind when you wanted to turn it to religious thought, and so I came back to say I'd relieve you of it and take it at once."
"Money! Oh!" Mr. Verstage was a little difficult to turn from one line of thought to another. "Polly never stood out for higher wages. Not like some who, when they've been with you just long enough to learn the ways of the house, and to make themselves useful, and not to break everything they handle, and spoil everything they touch, ask, 'Please will you advance my wages?' Polly never did that."
"I am not speakin' of Polly," said Jonas, peevishly, "but of some money that Joe Filmer told me you wanted to tell me about. Something that your poor wife desired you to give to Matabel."
"Oh, you mean that hundred pounds. I wasn't against it. On the contrary, I said I'd add fifty to it. I always said Sanna did wrong in giving Matabel to—I mean flying in the face of Providence."