“And what d’you think, sir? Back came that wagon of mine loaded up with linen, and basins, and crockery, a bed or two, and God knows what. She’d ransacked her own house, sir, and gone round to all the neighbors begging like a papist. Get the stuff? She did that. Not easy to say no to a woman with a face and a voice like hers. Carmagee joined in, and Canon Stensly, and a good score more. And dang my soul, Mr. Burt, she’d been working with her husband here, day in, day out; and that’s the sort of thing, sir, that I call religion.”
The Curate began to look vaguely uncomfortable under the farmer’s concentrated methods of address. It took much to move Mr. Carrington to words, but when once moved, the result resembled the eruption of a long quiescent volcano, the vigor of the eruption corresponding roughly to the length of the period of quiescence.
“I quite agree with you, Mr. Carrington,” he said, with a certain boyish stiffness, as though he considered it superfluous for the farmer to condemn his soul to perdition.
“You must excuse my language, Mr. Burt; when I get worked up over a subject I must let fly. And it’s these dirty lies that have been flying abroad about this good lady’s husband that have made me hot, sir, to see justice done.”
Mr. Burt appeared interested by the windows of the house that glimmered from amid a mass of creepers like water shining through the foliage of trees.
“One hears very curious rumors,” he acknowledged, with a discreet frown.
“I suppose you’ve heard them over at Cossington?”
“Well, I have heard reports.”
“About our doctor here and the drink?”
Mr. Burt nodded.