“You’ll be free to go out of Bridge End,” cried a third. “That’s what you’ll be free to do! And where’ll your vote be then, Ben?”
But there Bosham was sure of himself. “That’s where you be wrong, Mr. Willet,” he retorted with gusto. “My vote dunno come o’ my landlord, and in the Bridge End or out of the Bridge End, I’ve a vote while I’ve a breath! ’Tain’t the landlord’s vote, and why’d I give it to he? Free I be—not like you, begging your pardon! Freeman, old freeman, I be, of this borough! Freeman by marriage!”
“Then you be a very rare thing!” Bagenal retorted slyly. “There’s a many lose their freedom that way, but you be the first I ever heard of that got it!”
“And a hard bargain, too, as I hear,” said Willet.
This drew a roar of laughter. The crowd grew thicker and the little man’s temper grew short, for his wife was no beauty. He began to see that they were playing with him.
“You leave me alone, Mr. Willet,” he said angrily, “and I’ll leave you alone!”
“Leave thee alone!” said the farmer who had turned up his nose at milk. “So I would, same as any other lump o’ dirt! But yo’ don’t let us. Yo’ set up to know more than your betters! Pity the old lord ain’t alive to put his stick about your back!”
“Did it smart, Ben?” cried a lad who had poked himself in between his betters.
“You let me catch you,” Ben cried, “and I’ll make you smart. You be all a set of slaves! You’d set your thatch afire if squires’d tell you! Set o’ slaves, set o’ slaves you be!”
“And what be you, Bosham?” said a man who had just joined the group. “Head of the men, bain’t you? Cheap bread and high wages, that’s your line, ain’t it!”