“How can people,” said Letty, wonderingly, “grow so stupid about their money—what good is it to them!”
“None,” said Thorsby, “no more than so many oyster-shells; but, Miss Letty, it is of no use your trying to comprehend such people. Their ideas are as unintelligible to you as you are to them. If they were allowed to try a reforming hand on you, they would sell your laces and your clothes, put you into linsey-woolsey, and set you to feed the pigs. Then they would think you useful; now they think you, certainly, a very useless and expensive sort of creature.”
“Oh! I am glad they have not the opportunity for such a metamorphosis,” said Letty, laughing.
“It is the oddest thing in the world,” said Thorsby, “is that wonderful fancy for scraping up money, and denying yourself all your life-long the commonest necessaries. There is that old fellow, Woolley, of Derbyshire, who made the town-hall clock of Castleborough. That man once tried if he could not save horse hire by employing a lot of stockingers to draw his plough, as he held it, for he had a croft in his own hands; but the plough stuck fast at once in the earth, and the old man left it there, exclaiming, ‘How wonderful is the strength of a hoss!’ This old fellow is a freeman of Castleborough, and at the last election, coming to give his vote, he could not waste his precious time in waiting in the crowd at the hustings, but crept amongst their legs and came up by the table where the candidate and his friends stood taking votes. Seeing a very shabby-looking man thus emerge from amongst their feet, the candidate said, ‘There, my good fellow, vote and away,’ putting half-a-crown into his hand. ‘Stop!’ said the town-clerk, ‘that is a very rich man!’ But Woolley put the coin into his pocket, saying, ‘Every little helps!’ gave his vote, and disappeared.
“That clock which he made for the town-hall is a very remarkable one; it goes a year without winding up. When he put it up, he ordered that no one should meddle with it till he came to wind it up, and he took the key with him. Weeks, months, a year nearly went over, and the clock continued to go. At last one day, the very day year, it struck one short at twelve o’clock, and the town-clerk sent a man off to fetch Woolley, lest it should stop altogether. As the messenger ascended the hill out of the town, he met Woolley coming down. Having told him his errand: ‘Fools!’ said the clock-maker, ‘I told them I should come at the right time. It will go till one o’clock, and it yet wants half-an-hour.’ But Woolley,” continued Thorsby, “was a philosopher to this Squance, for on being told that his nephews would spend his money fast enough when he was gone, he replied, ‘If they have as much pleasure in spending it as I have had in getting it, I shall be quite satisfied. I sha’n’t haunt them.’”
“Oh! that is a sensible fellow, said Letty.”
“I am giving you,” said George, “a flying sketch of our different neighbours in this direction. See that tall brick house on the right hand there; with this nicely kept carriage-drive, and pair of handsome cast-iron gates and new lodge. That is the farm, or I should rather say now, residence, of Mr. Norton. He has a farm hereof his own, of five hundred acres: and it is called Peafield. Norton only lately married a fine lady from the south somewhere, who has effected all the changes that one sees here. Till her advent, there was no lodge, no carriage-road, and no carriage. Now there is a handsome phaeton and pair of greys. Norton himself—you know him, Thorsby—is a tall, solemn-looking man, who had only the education that Woodburn could give him; and was brought up as plodding a farmer as any of them hereabout. But this marriage has made a great change, if not in him, at least in all around him. Mrs. Norton, who writes notes on beautiful tinted note-paper with the address of Peafield on the top of each sheet, has had much trouble to school her husband—now Squire Norton, of Peafield—into something gentlemanly. He shoots, and courses, and drives like any gentleman, and really, when you meet him in his carriage with Mrs. Norton, you might suppose him some ‘squire of high degree;’ but unfortunately, like St. Peter of old, ‘his speech bewrayeth him,’ and Mrs. Norton has continually to check him and say, ‘Oh, my dear! not so—that is quite rustic—but so and so.’
“Tom Boddily, who has both eye and ear for the ridiculous, tells an anecdote which excites excessive mirth in the evening circle of the Grey Goose public-house. One evening, he says, when he worked there, Norton came into the yard with a lantern to see the horses properly suppered and bedded, and went into the barn to give out the oats for them. Soon after Tom went into the house, Norton came out of the parlour and says, ‘Run, Tom, into the barn; I left the lantern on the disappointment. Fetch it.’
“‘The disappointment?’ says Tom, ‘what might that be?’
“‘Oh!’ said Norton, turning very red, ‘deuce take all these new-fangled words—I mean the balk, man, the balk.’