"So do I wish with all my heart that I'd lost it--only I wouldn't for the world have her ladyship hear me say so."
"Lord! how we shall all miss you down here at the old place! But there! it seems months now since we saw you about the fields with your billycock on your head and your spud in your hand, or riding Gray Dapple from one farm to another, and all through that confounded 'lection. And now Gray Dapple's that fat for want of exercise she can hardly get out o' the stable door, and everything looks different since you took to them 'lectioneering ways."
"I am missed, then, a little bit, am I, Cozzard?"
"I should think you just was, Sir Thomas.--Why even old Granny Roper at the toll-bar says to me, only yesterday, says she: 'My snuff doesn't seem to have the right flavour now the squire's not here to dip his fingers in my box.'"
"The old girl said that, did she! I'll send her a quarter of a pound of the best rappee this very afternoon."
"Why the very dogs, Spot, and Ranger, and Lob, seem to miss you. I know they do. And poor old John Nutley as died t'other day--eighty and five weeks was his age--what were his last words? Why these: 'Give my respex to Sir Thomas,' says he, 'as has been a good master to me, and tell him as I should like to have seen him again afore going home. He would have shaken bands with me, I know he would, if he had been here.'"
"Poor old John! But why didn't you send for me?"
"You were speechifying at Pembridge," said Cozzard sententiously, not without a touch of contempt in his voice.
Sir Thomas coughed and turned the subject. "What I want you to do," said he, "is to write me a long letter once a week while I'm away in London, telling me how everything is going on. Not but what I shall drop down and see you sometimes on a Saturday. I would come every week--it's not a long journey--only you know----," and Sir Thomas actually winked at Cozzard.
"Only her ladyship wouldn't like it," said Cozzard bluntly.