“’Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.”
“She’s terrible deep, then.”
Mrs. Penny turned round. “Well, ’tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.”
“Ay, there’s no gainsaying it.”
Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another. “Happy, yes,” she said. “’Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she.”
“When they be’n’t too poor to have time to sing,” said grandfather James.
“I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes,” said the tranter: “when the oldest daughter’s boots be only a size less than her mother’s, and the rest o’ the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer’s comb is a-cut then, ’a believe.”
“That’s about the form o’t,” said Mr. Penny. “That’ll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter’s lasts to tell ’em apart.”
“You’ve no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,” said Mrs. Dewy; “for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!”
“I d’know it, I d’know it,” said the tranter. “You be a well-enough woman, Ann.”