When they had entered, and Stephen had dutifully and warmly greeted his mother—who appeared in a cotton dress of a dark-blue ground, covered broadcast with a multitude of new and full moons, stars, and planets, with an occasional dash of a comet-like aspect to diversify the scene—the crackle of cart-wheels was heard outside, and Martin Cannister stamped in at the doorway, in the form of a pair of legs beneath a great box, his body being nowhere visible. When the luggage had been all taken down, and Stephen had gone upstairs to change his clothes, Mrs. Smith’s mind seemed to recover a lost thread.
“Really our clock is not worth a penny,” she said, turning to it and attempting to start the pendulum.
“Stopped again?” inquired Martin with commiseration.
“Yes, sure,” replied Mrs. Smith; and continued after the manner of certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a casual mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the occasion, “John would spend pounds a year upon the jimcrack old thing, if he might, in having it claned, when at the same time you may doctor it yourself as well. ‘The clock’s stopped again, John,’ I say to him. ‘Better have en claned,’ says he. There’s five shillings. ‘That clock grinds again,’ I say to en. ‘Better have en claned,’ ’a says again. ‘That clock strikes wrong, John,’ says I. ‘Better have en claned,’ he goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this time if I had listened to en, and I assure you we could have bought a chainey-faced beauty wi’ the good money we’ve flung away these last ten years upon this old green-faced mortal. And, Martin, you must be wet. My son is gone up to change. John is damper than I should like to be, but ’a calls it nothing. Some of Mrs. Swancourt’s servants have been here—they ran in out of the rain when going for a walk—and I assure you the state of their bonnets was frightful.”
“How’s the folks? We’ve been over to Castle Boterel, and what wi’ running and stopping out of the storms, my poor head is beyond everything! fizz, fizz fizz; ’tis frying o’ fish from morning to night,” said a cracked voice in the doorway at this instant.
“Lord so’s, who’s that?” said Mrs. Smith, in a private exclamation, and turning round saw William Worm, endeavouring to make himself look passing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no connection with the humour he was in. Behind him stood a woman about twice his size, with a large umbrella over her head. This was Mrs. Worm, William’s wife.
“Come in, William,” said John Smith. “We don’t kill a pig every day. And you, likewise, Mrs. Worm. I make ye welcome. Since ye left Parson Swancourt, William, I don’t see much of “ee.”
“No, for to tell the truth, since I took to the turn-pike-gate line, I’ve been out but little, coming to church o’ Sundays not being my duty now, as ’twas in a parson’s family, you see. However, our boy is able to mind the gate now, and I said, says I, ‘Barbara, let’s call and see John Smith.’”
“I am sorry to hear yer pore head is so bad still.”
“Ay, I assure you that frying o’ fish is going on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes ’tisn’t only fish, but rashers o’ bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life; can’t I, Barbara?”