She could not have shown her good-sense or her honor better than by taking the matter as she did. But when John Gore spoke of his more tangible debt to her, she stirred the pudding hard, and would have none of his protests.
“No, sir, we have got good crops in, three milking-cows, a yard full of pullets, all stuff off our own ground. It’s just our own stuff, and we shall thank you to eat of it, though it be a bit rough, and not puffed up for a gentleman’s table. Charge you sixpence when we kill a chicken, or a penny when I take a bowl of apples down out of the attic? Dear life, sir, not me! My hands aren’t made that way.”
Chris Jennifer came in about dinner-time, heralding his approach by kicking his muddy boots against the stone step at the yard door. He came in, and received John Gore and his wife’s orders without so much as a blink of surprise. He stared hard at his guest for half a minute or so, and then took a big jug from a shelf over the fireplace.
“I’ll tap t’ new cask,” he said, as though that would be his warmest welcome. “Put some apples t’ sizzle, my dear. Suppose thee’ll be airin’ t’ best sheets.”
“Go on with you,” said his wife, bluntly; “do you think I be one to forget such a thing?”
Mr. Jennifer lumbered round to her, stood by her solemnly a moment, and then gave her a very deliberate dig under the arm.
“T’ woman stole gentleman Adam’s rib; mindings be mendings.” And he went off with a chuckle toward the pantry, leaving John Gore to disentangle the meaning of so solemn a jest.
XXXII
Little Dr. Hemstruther, in his rusty clothes, came out from my Lady Purcell’s house and entered the “chair” that was in waiting for him, telling the men to carry him to my Lord Gore’s, in St. James’s Street. He took snuff vigorously as the two chairmen swung along over the cobbles, patted his chest, and beat his hands together to keep them warm. His unwholesome face had a beaky, bird-like alertness, and he appeared cynically amused by something, for Dr. Hemstruther delighted in the quaint inconsistencies of human nature, and had a fanatical hatred of all altruism and the sentiment of religion. Like many sour old men, he was hugely pleased when he had discovered anything mean and scandalous. And yet he was to be trusted in the keeping of a secret, his cynical temper helping him to cover up the follies of those who filled his purse. He merely jeered and mocked at them in philosophic privacy, taking their money, and mocking his own self for being the creature of such hire.
The chairmen stopped before the house in St. James’s Street, Dr. Hemstruther waiting in the chair till the house door opened, for a keen northwest wind was sweeping the street. Toddling in at last—a shrewd, meagre figure, his long nose poking forward between the curls of his huge wig—he was shown by the man Rogers into a little room at the back of the house where Stephen Gore kept his books and papers.