“Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time,” said Henery Fray. “Never should have thought she’d have growed up such a handsome body as she is.”
“’Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face.”
“Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and ourselves. Ah!” Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of ironical knowledge.
“A queer Christian, like the Devil’s head in a cowl,[[1]] as the saying is,” volunteered Mark Clark.
“He is,” said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain point. “Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days—that I do so.”
“Good faith, you do talk!” said Gabriel.
“True enough,” said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon the company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable of. “Ah, there’s people of one sort, and people of another, but that man—bless your souls!”
Gabriel thought fit to change the subject. “You must be a very aged man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient,” he remarked.
“Father’s so old that ’a can’t mind his age, can ye, father?” interposed Jacob. “And he’s growed terrible crooked too, lately,” Jacob continued, surveying his father’s figure, which was rather more bowed than his own. “Really one may say that father there is three-double.”
“Crooked folk will last a long while,” said the maltster, grimly, and not in the best humour.