“Oh, yes.”
“Well,” said Martha Strudwick, thoughtfully, “that depends on what kind of things you mean. Now there’s my husband—and he’s a good man, good as common—he can find a fish-hook in the dark if it’s good biting season; but he can’t see the long-handled hoe in the broad daylight if it’s weeding time in the garden and the sun is hot. Finding things depends more on a man’s mind than his eyes.”
“Then there’s a heap of them who lose their minds mighty handy,” retorted Ann Clevering.
Mistress Cheshire pushed back her chair: “I shall run home and caution Dilsy about putting the bread to rise; she’s that unseeing that I think Providence must have first meant her to be a man.” Which was as near a joke as anything Mistress Cheshire ever said. As she trotted away the others looked after her affectionately.
“Mary is such a mild-mannered woman,” said Ann Clevering; “many’s the time I’ve heard her first husband—dead and gone these twenty-three years—say it was an accident little short of a miracle how Providence could make a woman with so little tongue.”
“Joscelyn, with her goings-on, must be a dreadful trial to her,” sighed Amanda Bryce.
“And not only to her mother, but to the whole town,” snapped another woman.
“Hoity-toity!” bristled Mistress Strudwick, “what’s the matter with Joscelyn? She is the very life of the place, now that the men are gone. If ’twere not for discussing her, and abusing her,”—with a withering glance at the last speaker,—“we should go tongue-tied for lack of somewhat to talk about. She’s a tonic for us all, and without her we’d be going to sleep.”
“Sleep is a good thing,” sniffed Amanda Bryce.
“Ay,” retorted Mistress Strudwick, “when you are tucked in bed and the lights are out, it is; but not when you are standing up flat-footed with baking and brewing and weaving and such things to look after. Joscelyn’s all right, Tory though she be. Look at her now, with all those red roses stuck around her belt; she’s the finest sight on the street.”