“Plenty in it for the cotton people and the coal people, and the potters. But not for us!”
“But if Sir Robert sees it that way?” queried the surgeon, delicately.
“Then if Sir Robert were member for Riddsley,” Hayward answered stubbornly, “he’d get his notice to quit, Dr. Pepper! You may bet your hat on that!”
“There’s one got a lesson last night,” a new-comer chimed in. “Parson Colet got so beaten on the moor he’s in bed I am told. He’s been speaking free these last two months, and I thought he’d get it. Three lads from your part I am told, Hayward.”
“Well, well!” the farmer replied with philosophy. “There’s good in Colet, and maybe it’ll be a lesson to him! Anyway, good or bad, he’s going.”
“Going?” cried two or three, speaking at once.
“I met Rector not two hours back. He’d a letter from Colet saying he was going to preach the same rubbish here as he’s fed ’em with at Brown Heath—cheap bread and the rest of it. Rector’s been to him—he wouldn’t budge, and he got his notice to quit right straight. Rector was fit to burst when I saw him.”
“Colet be a born fool!” cried Musters. “Who’s like to employ him after that? Wheat is tithe and the parsons are as fond of their tithe as any man. You may look a long way before you’ll find a parson that’s a repealer.”
“Serves Colet right!” said one. “But I’m sorry for him all the same. There’s worse men than the Reverend Colet.”
Basset could never say afterwards what moved him at this point, but whatever it was he got up and went out. The boots was lounging at the door of the inn. He asked the man where Mr. Colet lodged, and learning that it was in Stream Street, near the Maypole, he turned that way.