A NICE SAMPLE OF FARMERS.
About ten o’clock in the morning, Harry Thorsby rode into the
farm-yard at Woodburn Grange, gave his horse to the groom, and
entered the house-place from the garden. There sat the whole family—a
perfectly rural group—George excepted. The ample bay-window of that
large cool room was thrown open on the sunny side, and the sunshine
and shadow flickered pleasantly amongst the rose and jasmine boughs
round the window. On the cool brick-floor stood a large basket of
ripe gooseberries, and Mrs. Woodburn and Ann were busy clipping off
their eyes and stalks, and dropping them into dishes on their knees,
in preparation for preserving. Mr. Woodburn sat on the other side of
the circle, shelling peas—a job he was very fond of—into a shallow
basket on his knees, from a large one on another chair at his side.
Letty sat on a scarlet cushion on the floor in the middle, reading
from some book to the rest. She was in a white morning-dress, and
Thorsby’s eyes were first directed to her.
“Good morning!” said he, pleasantly, “all you very useful people. And
you, Letty?”
Letty brightened up with a rosy blush and brilliant eyes, and said,
“Oh, quite well!”
“What, no worse for that Jeremiad yesterday?”
“Oh, no!—why should I? As father says, it was only Quaker
phraseology.”
“Then I wish,” said Thorsby, seating himself, “she would keep it
exclusively for the Quakers.”
“Well, I really wish she would,” said Ann. “Poor, dear Letty was very
much put out by it. She was very restless and feverish in her sleep.
She slept with her eyes partly open, and glistening, which frightened
me, for I got up, the night being light, several times, to look at
her, and woke her because she was trying to cry out in her dreams.”
“Oh, I was dreaming all sorts of horrid impossibilities,” said Letty,
laughing; “climbing over the tops of houses, and the like, and not
knowing how to get down.”
“Ah, there it is!” said Thorsby. “I shall call and tell that
dove-coloured Pythoness that this sort of thing won’t do.”
“No!” exclaimed all the family at once, Letty more energetically than
the rest, “you must not do that. It would grieve poor Mrs. Heritage
so; and there is nothing amiss. I am quite well,” said Letty.
“Grieve poor Mrs. Heritage, indeed!” replied Thorsby. “These canting,
religious people, however, don’t care whom they grieve.”
“I cannot agree to that, Mr. Thorsby,” said Ann. “No nobler-hearted
or more humane woman lives than Mrs. Heritage.”
“I think,” said Thorsby, “they are selfish, money-grubbing people,
these Quakers; and that there’s not much to choose between ‘the
Quaker sly’ and canting Methodist.”
“Or a backbiting profanian!” said a voice behind.
Thorsby turned quickly round, and exclaimed, “Oh, Betty Trapps, so
you are there! eh?”
Betty had come in for a pie-dish from the great cupboard, and caught
the fling at the Methodists just as she was going out.
“Ah! just in time, Betty,” said Thorsby. “I’ve got a pleasant
anecdote for you.”
Betty was moving off, without deigning a reply, when Thorsby said—
“You know that your old acquaintance, Molly Ayre, is dead?”
“No,” said Betty, stopping at once. “No. Is it true?”
“True as gospel,” said Thorsby; “and I want to tell you her dying
sayings.”
Betty was riveted to the spot by the news of Molly Ayre’s departure
and her dying sayings, for she had a great veneration for dying
sayings.
“Well,” said Thorsby, addressing the company at large, “you know that
old Sam Ayre, as we familiarly call him, is a bag-hosier,—that is, he
possesses a score of stocking-frames, employs as many stockingers,
and brings in his hose to our warehouse. Molly, his wife, kept a
little shop. They were both zealous Methodists, and Sam——”
“You might as well say ‘Samuel,’ Mr. Thorsby,” interrupted Betty.
“And Sam, or Samuel, is a class-leader in high repute. Yesterday
comes somebody begging my mother to go to Mr. Ayre’s, as the Missis
was dying. Molly Ayre had been a servant at my grandfather’s. My
mother hurried off. The poor woman evidently was near her end, and
was giving some last directions to her husband, who sat, burly man as
he is, drowned in tears on the bed-side.
“‘Well,’ continued the dying woman, ‘my dear Samuel, thou’ll find
all th’ accounts o’ th’ shop right in th’ book in that drawer there.
There’s forty pounds owing to different people, principally to Mr.
Fairfax, the grocer. Thou’ll see it punctually paid?’
“‘Eh! poor dear soul!’ said the husband, ‘wandering! You see she’s
quite wandering!’
“‘And,’ continued the dying wife, ‘there’s a good deal more owing to
us. Thou’ll find it all down i’ the book; and i’ th’ same drawer a
good heap of money in a stocking.’
“‘Eh! blessed, dear creetur!’ said Ayre, the tears streaming down
his cheeks—‘poor, dear creetur! Sensible to th’ last minute!—sensible
to th’ last minute!’”
“Oh, get out with thy profanities!” said Betty, going out, and
pulling the door after her smartly; not even staying to hear how
Molly Ayre went at last.
The whole Woodburn family could not help laughing heartily at this
picture of human nature, though they were afraid it might reach
Betty’s indignant ears.
“As to the Quakers, however,” continued Mr. Woodburn, “I must assert
that though they are devoted to getting money, some of them make
a very good use of it. The Heritages are extremely benevolent,
and expend large sums every year in adding to the comforts and in
promoting education amongst the poor, both in Woodburn and in the far
greater field of Castleborough.”
“Ay, and they gather in plenty to do it with,” said Thorsby. “Why,
Mr. Heritage’s gold may go out by pecksfull, but it flows in by
bushelsfull.”
“That may be,” said Mr. Woodburn, “but it does not alter my position.
Look, then, at Mr. Dell. Now, he is a man who is not in their
Society, but he goes to their meeting, and associates with them, from
his sense of their more thoroughly moral character than that of most
other people. There is a man who is always planning some good for the
people. He has himself built and endowed a free school for the poor;
and has worked actively in creating public gardens and public walks
in all directions.”
“And that intelligent and liberal man,” said Thorsby, “can go and sit
two mortal hours, on a Sunday morning, in their meetings, where not a
word is uttered! Wonderful!”
“Well,” said Mr. Woodburn, “that is rather wonderful; but then he
tells me that he takes the Bible in his pocket, and reads a chapter
or two, and meditates on it.”
“He might do that at home,” said Thorsby.
“He might,” said Mr. Woodburn, “and we might and may leave people to
their peculiar notions of what suits them best,” quietly proceeding
with his pea-shelling. “And look, again, at that brave old man,
William Fairfax, the eminent grocer and hop-dealer. Did you ever see
a picture of the great law reformer, Jeremy Bentham? or of Benjamin
Franklin?”
“Of Franklin, of course,” said Thorsby.
“Well,” continued Mr. Woodburn, “there is a great general resemblance
in the persons of these three great men, for I place Mr. Fairfax in
the scale of great men. They were, and he is, of middle height and
strong build. They had, and Mr. Fairfax has, a style of countenance
with strong features, somewhat prominent nose, and their hair hanging
in abundance on their shoulders. Mr. Fairfax dresses, as you know,
in plain drab, with waistcoat long and with flaps; and he may
often be seen going about the town without his hat, and looking
very abstracted, and with one hand thrust into his waistcoat about
half-way down.
“Now there is a man who, if he had had the same education, or the
same ambition, as Franklin or Bentham, would have achieved as great a
reputation, for he has as great and original abilities. It is lucky
for Castleborough, however, that his lot is cast there. He has always
stood forth for the good and independence of the place without any
regard to his own interest.”
“But his interests have flourished finely,” said Thorsby.
“True,” added Mr. Woodburn, “but not the less true his daring and
noble independence. Awhile ago, Lord Middleton sent his servant to
say, that if Mr. Fairfax did not vote for the Tory candidate for one
of the borough seats in Parliament, he would withdraw his custom.
‘Tell thy master, young man,’ said Mr. Fairfax, ‘that I am not an
Esau to sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. He is free to
take his custom where he pleases.’ His lordship withdrew his custom
accordingly, but he soon found that he could not get served so well
anywhere else, and so went back to Mr. Fairfax’s shop. But the most
remarkable thing is, that Mr. Fairfax has never paid a penny of the
property tax.”
“And do you call that honest, Mr. Woodburn?” asked Thorsby.
“Yes, perfectly so, in his case. The law was expressly stated, in
the preamble to the act, to be for the prosecution of the war. Mr.
Fairfax, as a Quaker, has a decided objection to war, as unchristian.
He could not pay it; but he was quite ready to allow the law to take
his property for that purpose. He was willing to suffer, though he
could not conscientiously pay the tax voluntarily. Well, what was
the consequence? Distraints were made repeatedly on his goods for
the amount. Nobody would buy them; and they were always bought back
at the expiration of the number of days prescribed by law. At length
the Commissioners sent for him. William Fairfax walked into their
presence without his hat, and with his right-hand, as usual, thrust
into his waistcoat.
“‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said the clerk to the Commissioners—a man of very
dubious character, I must say—‘Mr. Fairfax, what trouble you give us.
It is the law of the land, and you must obey it.’
“‘If,’ said Mr. Fairfax, ‘Parliament passes an act to set up
Nebuchadnezzar’s image again, wouldst bow down to it?’
“‘No,’ said the clerk. ‘I would fly my country first!’
“‘Yes, the wicked flee when no man pursueth,’ said Mr. Fairfax,
quietly; ‘the righteous stands his ground as bold as a lion.’
“Mr. Fairfax stood erect, grave, and without moving a muscle, in
the midst of the circle of Commissioners, who burst into a roar of
laughter at the hard hit which their lawyer clerk had received.
William Fairfax walked unmoved out of the room, and a few weeks after
the act was repealed. He never paid a penny of it.”
“Then I think he should,” said Thorsby.
“I don’t,” said Mr. Woodburn. “I think every man should stand boldly
by his conscientious convictions. Mr. Fairfax did not care a straw
about the amount of the tax. It was the public of Castleborough,
doing homage to his uprightness, that refused to mulct him with the
tax and the costs of the distraint. I could tell you many other
remarkable acts of this genuine Quaker, as far from any cant or
selfishness as Pole is from Pole; but I see George standing with a
proposition in his face.”
“Yes,” said George, “it is a most delicious forenoon. The air is
blowing charmingly, and tempers the heat. I am going to Hillmartin
and a little beyond, and I want you, Letty, to mount Fairaway, and
have a gallop in the breeze. It is what you want to take the dismals
out of your blood. Ann, what say you?”
“I say that I shall stay and help mother; but, Letty, by all means,
and Mr. Thorsby will join you.”
“Of course he will,” said Thorsby.
“Your horse is saddled, Letty,” added George. “I will have him
brought out, and so away, and get on your habit.”
Letty was soon arrayed in hat and habit, looking as fresh and blithe
as if nothing had disturbed her nerves: and anon the three, with
Letty in the middle, were taking their way up the ascending road
towards Hillmartin. It was, as George had said, a delicious July
day. Over the sky light clouds were scattered; the breeze, soft yet
fresh, made the sun genial and not oppressive. The wild roses wound
fragrantly from the tall hedges, and the light-blue buglos, and the
lighter-blue chicory—the latter with flowers as if cut out of silk,
and stuck formally on the stalks—studded the sandy banks of the wide
heathery lane that they rode along. The wheat-fields stood green,
but in full ear, and the convolvulus and the scarlet poppy showed
themselves gaily round the borders of the corn-fields.
“I never see those flaunting field-poppies now,” said George
Woodburn, “without thinking of that young poet Keats:—
‘Those scarlet poppies, which do bring to mind
The scarlet coats which trouble human kind.’”
“Ah!” said Letty, “but I think more fondly of Ruth, in the ‘Ode to
the Nightingale’:—
‘when sick for home
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.’
That image of the faithful daughter of Moab has given me a new and
lasting charm in corn-fields.”
“I wish,” said George, “some great poet or magician could come and
drive a little poetry, or at least common sense, into the old fellow
yonder looking over his homestead gate.”
“Why,” said Letty, “that is that wretched old miser, Timothy Squance.”
“Yes, it’s Tim Squance, sure enough,” said George. “Notice him well,
Thorsby.”
As they drew near, they saw an old man standing leaning his hands
on the gate which led into his farm-yard. He was in a dingy,
dirty-looking suit of coarse, grey cloth, with black worsted
stockings and strong laced ankle-boots. He had on an old, slouching,
weather-beaten hat, and looked with a still, half-imbecile look at
the advancing young equestrians. He made no movement of recognition.
“Good day, Mr. Squance,” said George Woodburn; “fine weather for the
corn.”
“Ay, Master George, and for the hay too. I reckon you’ve gotten yourn
in.”
“We have,” said George, as they continued to ride on. “But Squance
has not got his in; and won’t for this next ten days, because he
won’t pay for the necessary men. There are his two great strong sons,
and an old carter working at it, that is all. Look at his house, his
yard, his hedges, his everything. The thatch on the house is old and
rotten; his yard doors are tumbling down—some have fairly fallen to
pieces, and he stops the doorway with hurdles. Look at the dirt in
his yard. Look at these hedges of his, spreading out on all sides,
covering acres of ground. Look at these great bramble-bushes, and
furze-bushes, standing here and there in his grass lands. And see
what rushes and blue wiry grass are growing all over his fields
of pasture. Not a penny will that man pay to stub and drain his
fields,—they are growing wild. He cannot see that labour well
employed is more profitable than the sparing of it. His sordid,
narrow soul cannot comprehend such an idea. In winter his farm is
drowned and starved with water. His house is unapproachable for
deep mire. In summer his corn-fields are smothered with weeds and
thistles and couch-grass. He quotes Sir Roger Rockville in defence of
letting things alone—of bad roads and a filthy farm-yard. He won’t
put his money in a bank or out at interest lest he should lose it;
and years ago he had his house broken into by some canal-cutters, and
had himself and his wife tied to the bed-posts whilst they ransacked
the house, but the thieves found nothing. It is believed that he has
buried a great deal of money on his farm, or in the copses; and it is
doubted whether his two equally sordid sons even know where it is, or
will ever find it. Avarice has reduced his soul to the most wretched
condition of poverty and littleness possible for it to reach and be
a soul at all. He formerly had a brother still more keenly penurious
than himself. He was so stupid that when any one in the house—for the
brothers lived together—offended him, he would threaten to cut his
throat and go to America.
“Oh,” said Thorsby, who could never let a jest escape him, “no doubt
he thought he had to cross the Red Sea to America.”
“Those two sons of Squance’s,” continued George, “never had an atom
of education but what they picked up in winter from Howell Crusoe;
and he said that endeavouring to teach them was like trying to fetch
water out of an empty well. I once went to the house about some sheep
of his that had got out of his fields—for the fences were full of
wide gaps—and were in a furzy hollow, called the Dales, and were
sticking fast by their fleeces to the furze and briars. You should
have seen the place! There sat old Squance, just as you now saw
him, filthy in the extreme; his face did not appear to have had any
acquaintance with water for years; his grizzly beard was coarsely
clipped with scissors, and looked like a rough stubble. The house
was half filled with faggots, and he sat on a bench on one side with
a billhook cutting them into fire-wood. His wife, not much cleaner
or decenter, was cooking at the wide black fire-place; and the walls
were all round black with smoke, stained with grease, and completely
covered with smoked hams and flitches of bacon. The ceiling was
partly occupied with the like, and with paper bags of seeds, and
bunches of herbs, camomile, horehound, sage, and mint, hanging from
it.”
“But remember, George,” said Letty, with much merriment, “remember
what a funeral they made for that silly brother, who used to talk of
going such an odd way to America.”
“Oh, to be sure,” said George. “The coffin was put into the great
waggon, and the old man, his wife, and the two sons, sat round it.
They had managed to display black for mourning, but it is believed to
have been hired at a pawnbroker’s, for it has never been seen since.
The waggon was drawn by six great farm-horses, with all their bells
on their collars ringing and jingling as they went.”
“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.’
“Tom comprehended in a moment. Mrs. Norton had heard her husband
speaking of being baulked on some occasion, and had corrected him,
wishing him to say disappointed. Hence his jump to the idea that
a balk or beam was a disappointment in polite language. ‘Well,’
said Tom, ‘was it that he thought of the lantern, for he found the
candle burnt down to the socket, the hot tallow and great pieces of
red-hot snuff falling through a burnt hole in the lantern on the
straw beneath, and in a little time the whole building would have
been in a flame.’ Tom, however, was as unlucky as he had been with
his captain. Norton thought he was too wide awake to the ridiculous
in his schooling by his learned lady, and he has never employed him
since.”
“But it is time to turn homewards,” said George, as they were merrily
laughing over the late education of Squire Norton, of Peafield. “Ah!
but here is another original.”
“Good-day to you, Mr. Woodburn,” said a jolly, rosy farmer, with a
broad, merry, and humorous smile on his face, as he stood setting
wide his field-gate for a loaded hay-waggon to come out. After a few
good-humoured words with Farmer Thatcher—as they rode on, George
said,—“Now there is a man who is a man in his place, and who does not
want to be out of it. He is a genuine through and through farmer,
and nothing more nor less. Honest, and genial as the day is long;
he loves a joke as he loves his pot of beer and his harvest dish of
broad beans and fat bacon; but his jokes are never at the expense
of a neighbour, but rather of himself. He says, when he wants warm
weather, he puts his flannel-waistcoat on, and then, he says, it
is sure to come to try to plague him: and he goes out without an
umbrella when he wants rain, and it is sure to come and try to gi’
him the rheumatiz. He won’t have a blanket taken off his bed in
spring, because, he says, it will immediately turn cold, and he
should spoil all the crops in the country. These are his jokes,
for things really seem to happen to us thus oddly; but the country
fellows here believe him in earnest, and say he certainly is the
weather-wisest man hereabout and far away.”
With such light-hearted discourse the three found themselves back at
Woodburn Grange for dinner, which was set out, as usual in the warm
weather, in the house-place. All feelings of sadness or foreboding
had vanished. Letty was as beaming and blithe as usual, and Harry
Thorsby was overflowing with fun. As Betty Trapps waited at table,
Thorsby could not refrain from trying a fresh word or two with her.
“Why, Betty,” he said, “you did not wait to hear what a good end your
friend Mrs. Ayre made. I assure you it was very edifying.”
Betty said she did not wish to hear Mr. Thorsby jest on sacred
subjects.
“I wish now,” said Thorsby, “I was half as learned as you, Betty,
in the Bible. Come now, tell me this: What was the reason that Jacob
on his death-bed, said ‘Bless the lads,’ but said nothing about the
lasses?”
Betty was doggedly silent.
“Do you give it up, Betty?” asked Thorsby; “do you give it up?” Betty
still maintained a disdainful silence, wiping a plate very briskly
with a napkin, and handing it to one of the company.
“It was, then,” said Thorsby, “because Jacob left the lads to bless
the lasses.”
Jacob’s logic tickled Letty wonderfully—she laughed aloud, and the
graver Ann smiled demurely, and the rest looked much amused.
“I thought it was some graceless ribaldry,” said Betty then,
scornfully. “Eh! what a death-bed there’ll be somewhere, one day! I
wouldn’t be there for all the cotton in Castleborough, for all the
wealth in Lunnon, for all the fish in the Trent.” And with that,
taking up the tray, Betty disappeared, and left them to their
dessert, no doubt with much aggravated ideas of Thorsby’s death-bed,
which was sure of coming some day. That was her comfort in all
Thorsby’s scorns and jibes, as she called them, though she would
not have liked to confess it to herself. On the contrary, she often
made the pious ejaculation—“God give him grace to see his awful
state. It makes one’s flesh creep to think of it. That young man
goes on tempting Providence as if there was not a sky above him, and
a listening ear in it, that hears and listens on as if nothing had
happened, and yet there is another dot gone down in the great Book of
Account. God help him; I am glad he is neither kin nor follower of
mine.”
This she said to Ann Woodburn, who, in the course of the afternoon,
told her she thought her quite rude to Mr. Thorsby, who was very
lively, but really meant no harm.
“No,” said Betty, “he may mean no harm, and yet there may be harm.
There are clouds as often hang o’er heads as never see ’em. I’m
jealous, Miss, I am, and awfully when I see such a squitter-witted
thing as that—a will-o’-the-wisp, as can only lead into a bog,
hanging about that precious Miss Letty.”
“Miss Letty!” said Ann, looking offended.
“Ah! Miss Letty; an angel, too good for any such scapegrace as hasn’t
sown even his wild oats—only mere skegs, which are but bastard oats.
I’ve eyes, Miss, I have,” said Betty, “if other folks haven’t, as
should have. He is clever, I grant you, is that young man; but mark
me, Miss Woodburn, he is all fingers and no wrist. He is all pendulum
and no clock-weights. He doesna want cleverness, no more nor a
monkey, but he wants sober sense, and grace more nor all. I’ve heard
of his daubing a poor dumb creature’s face, as if it had fallen, and
getting it a terrible beating. Ay, and he’d daub an angel’s face,
and ca’ it a devil, if it suited him. He would black the devil’s
boots for nothing, while poor Christians were walking barefoot over
glass bottles.”
“Stop, Betty, cease!” said Ann, with much authority. “Now you are
becoming malicious. I cannot permit you to speak in such a manner
of any friend of our family. I—and I am sure my parents—expect you
to behave with respect to all who come here with our approbation.
Again I tell you, Mr. Thorsby means no harm. I wish, indeed, that
both he and you, Betty, were more guarded in your expressions; but
you are older than he is, Betty, and should set him an example of
forbearance.”
Betty was silent.
Betty was not more sharp-sighted than any member of the Woodburn
family. All had long seen the intense admiration of Henry Thorsby for
Letty, and that Letty was growing strongly attached to him. But no
one, except Betty, augured anything but the greatest satisfaction in
the alliance. No direct overtures had yet been made by Mr. Thorsby;
but his devotion to her was obvious in all his actions, and in
his constant rides to Woodburn Grange, rather than to his former
favourite places of resort. Though his gaiety, and freedom of speech,
and fondness for a little satirical mirth, at the expense of her
beloved Methodists, offended Betty Trapps and others of her society,
his moral character was without a blemish: and his social position
and wealth, as shown by the extent of his business, were all that
could be desired.