Thorsby found the very way to call Betty out was to give her a little wipe about Methodism, when she was sure to take up cudgels, as she called it, on that point; but this did not seem to raise Mr. Thorsby in her favour.
As time went on the intimacy of this little circle of families increased. Sometimes Sir Emanuel rode up to the Grange, and after chatting for an hour with the ladies, and walking with them round their garden, noticing their trees and young broods of different feathered stock, and telling them an anecdote of his foreign sojourns, and then carrying off the ever-ready Letty for a ride, and picking up, perhaps, Miss Heritage by the way, he would invite a number of them, and their parents, brothers, and sisters, to come up and spend an evening, and see the wonders of the heavens through his great telescope in the tower. Advancing spring and summer drew the young people out to rides and walks through the fields and woods, and to boat sails on the river. Summer made all busy at the Grange: the swarming of bees, the making of cheese and butter, the labourers all engaged in weeding the green corn, and coming in in troops for plentiful dinners and suppers, kept Betty Trapps in constant action, and in nimble bandying of country wit with these workpeople. Betty sat at table and carved for them, and dealt out sly hits to one or another as she dealt out plates well-heaped with boiled beef or bacon, and plenty of broad beans, cabbage, and other vegetables. There was often more genuine wit and humour circulating amongst these sons of the soil than illumines the boards of very great men.
“Ah! you there, Joe Clay,” cried Betty, “let me give you some more greens.”
“O! no more greens, thank you,” said Joe ruefully, “but a little more cabbage if you please, Betty.”
There was a loud burst of laughter, which the uninitiated would not have seen the gist of; but Joe Clay had married a Green, who led him anything but a green life. Not even Xantippe could have cut gibes with her.
“How’s your wife’s mother, Nathan Hopcroft?”
Nathan Hopcroft, a stupid-looking fellow, shakes his head. “Th’ owd ooman’s stark dead, Missis; and I canna bury her; an’ I mun ha’ it done.”
“Good rest to her,” said Betty, “she had long ceased to know much of this world—and, Nathan, if you canna bury her, you know where to go.”
“Where?”
“To the club.”