"What! Why everything. What hinders me leavin' the whole pass'l o' items, farm and Ship to her? She'll marry a stiff man as'll look after the farm, and she'll mind the public-house every mite as well as ever have you, old woman. That's a gal as knows chalk from cheese."
Mrs. Verstage leaned back with a gasp of dismay and a cramp at her heart. She dropped her hands on her lap.
"You ain't speaking serious, Simon?"
"I might do wuss," said he; "and the wust I could do 'ad be to give everythin' to that wastrel, Iver, who don't know the vally of a good farm and of a well-established public-house. I don't want nobody after I'm dead and gone to see rack and ruin where all were plenty and good order both on land and in house, and that's what things would come to wi' Iver here."
"Simon, he is a man now. He was a boy, and what he did as a boy he won't do as a man."
"He's a dauber of paints still."
The taverner stood up. "I'll go and cast an eye over the hay-field," he said. "It makes me all of a rage like to think o' that boy."
He threw away the broken pipe and walked off.
Mrs. Verstage's brain spun like a teetotum; her heart turned cold.
She was startled out of her musings by the voice of Mehetabel, who said, "Mother, it is so hot in the kitchen that I have come out to cool myself. Where is father? I thought I heard him talking with you?"