"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Misther Dawson!" began Mike O'Flynn.
But Dawson rose slowly and laid one hand on the little man's shoulder.
"It's my business as much as your'n, lad, that no one here speaks words like them there o' Waite's, what I wouldn't care for Mrs. Robson to hear. Ah've known her since she was a little lass, an' used to ride her pony up to Sheepfold as pretty as a circus girl. Eli's a stranger like, an' don't know what we of Anderby does."
"Then it's me who'll tell him quick enough bedad, if he clacks his foul tongue again."
"Doant be a fool, Mike." Dawson's deep voice rose from a cloud of blue smoke. "Waite won't say no more. Ye see, it's like this here, Eli. Mike was sick two years ago last harvest up at Littledale, and Mrs. Robson went up at night an' sat poulticing him an' the like for long enough."
"'Twas pneumonia I had," broke in Mike, unwilling to surrender to another the pleasure of telling this story. "Like to die I was, and seeing the gowlden gates half opened an' she came to me like an angel from heaven.
"'Is it the praste you'll be wanting?' says she. 'Now what should I want with a praste when 'tis the angels themselves have come to look after me'? says I. But she only smiled and sent for Father Murphy from Hardrascliffe, and for three days an' nights she hardly left me side an' me with a pain like hot iron across me chest, an' me voice like the creaking o' the pump when 'tis oiling it needs."
"Ay. That's all very well for Robsons, but all folks ain't like that, nor all farmers either. Mrs. Robson 'ud give away her last coat if need be; but ah've just come from a talk wi' Ted Wilson—him as is gardener for Willerby's up at Highwold."
The speaker was a lean, melancholy man who had been fidgeting by himself with a draught-board in the corner.
"They're new folks, ain't they?"