“Oh, sir, don’t!” then came out with a burst of tears. “My poor children—”
“Don’t go whining about your children, but let me see you do your work.”
However, this last sentence was in a milder tone, as if the fit of passion had exhausted itself; and Mr Goodenough found his way back to the path that crossed the fields, and went on. Tirzah Todd set her teeth, clenched her fist and shook it after him, while the other women, as soon as he was out of sight, began to console Bessy Mole, who was crying bitterly and saying, “what would become of her poor children, and her own poor father.”
“Never you mind, Bessy,” said Molly Hewlett, “every one knows as how old Goodenough’s bark is worse than his bite.”
“He runs out and it’s over,” put in Betsy Seddon.
“I’m sure I can hardly keep about any way,” sobbed the widow. “My inside is all of a quake. I can’t abide words.”
“Ten to one he don’t give you another sixpence a week, after all,” added Nanny Barton.
“He ain’t no call to run out at one,” said Tirzah, standing upright and flourishing her baby.
“I’d like to give him as good as he gave, an old foul-mouthed brute!”
“Look there! There’s the ladies coming,” exclaimed Nanny Barton.
“I thought there was some reason why he stopped his jaw so soon,” exclaimed Molly, stooping down and pulling up weeds (including turnips) with undiscerning energy, in which all the others followed her example, except Tirzah, who sulkily retreated under the hedge with her baby, while Jem Hewlett and Lizzie Seddon ran forward for better convenience of staring. It was a large field, and the party were still a good way off; but as it sloped downwards behind the women, the farmer must have seen them a good deal before the weeders had done so.
These, be it remembered, were days when both farmers and their labourers were a great deal rougher in their habits than we, their grandchildren, can remember them; and there was, besides, the Old Poor Law, which left the amount of relief and of need to be fixed at the vestry meetings by the ratepayers themselves of each parish alone so that the poor were entirely dependent on the goodwill or judgment of their employers, whose minds were divided between keeping down the wages and the rates, and who had little of real principle or knowledge to guide them. It was possible to have recourse to the magistrates at the Petty Sessions, who could give an order which would override the vestry; but it was apt to be only the boldest, and often the least deserving, who could make out the best apparent cases for themselves, that ventured on such a measure.
The two ladies stopped and spoke to Molly Hewlett and Nanny Barton, whom they had seen at their doors, and who curtsied low; and Nanny, as she saw Mrs Carbonel’s eyes fall on her boots, put in—
“Yes, ma’am, ’tis bitter hard work this cold, damp weather, and wears out one’s shoes ter’ble. These be an old pair of my man’s, and hurts my poor feet dreadful, all over broken chilblains as they be; and my fingers, too,” she added, spreading out some fingers the colour of beetroot, with dirty rags rolled round two of them.
Dora shrank. “And you can go on weeding with them?”
“Yes, ma’am. What can us do, when one’s man gets but seven shillings a week. And I’ve had six children, and buried three,” and her face looked ready for tears.
“Well, we will come and see you, and try to find something to help you,” said Mrs Carbonel. “Where do you live?”
“Out beyond the church, ma’am—a long way for a lady.”
“Oh, we are good walkers.”
“And please, my lady,” now said Molly, coming to the front, “if you could give me an old bit of a pelisse, or anything, to make up for my boy there. He’s getting big, you see, and he is terrible bad off for clothes. I don’t know what is to be done for the lot of ’em.”
Dora had recognised in the staring boy, who had come up close, him who had made the commotion in church; and she ventured to say, “I remember him. Don’t you think, if you or his father kept him with you in church, he would behave better there?”
“Bless you, miss, his father is a sceptic. I can’t go while I’ve got no clothes—nothing better than this, miss; and I always was used to go decent and respectable. Besides, I couldn’t nohow take he into the seat with me, as Master Pucklechurch would say I was upsetting of his missus.”
“Well, I hope to see him behave better next Sunday.”
“Do you hear, Jem? The lady is quite shocked at your rumbustiousness! But ’twas all Joe Saunders’s fault, ma’am, a terrifying the poor children. His father will give him the stick, that he will, if he hears of it again.”
Meantime Mrs Carbonel had turned to Widow Mole, who, after her first curtsey, had been weeding away diligently and coughing.
“Where do you live?” she asked. “I don’t think I have seen you before.”
“No, ma’am,” she said quietly. “I live down the Black Hollow.”
“You don’t look well. Have you been ill? You have a bad cough.”
“It ain’t nothing, ma’am, thank you. I can keep about well enough.”
“Do you take anything for it?”
“A little yarb tea at night sometimes, ma’am.”
“We will try and bring you some mixture for it,” said Mrs Carbonel. And then she spoke to Betsy Seddon, who for a wonder had no request on her tongue, and asked her who the other woman was, in the hedge with the baby.
“That’s Tirzah Todd, ma’am,” began Mrs Seddon, but Molly Hewlett thrust her aside, and went on, being always the most ready with words; “she is Reuben Todd’s wife, and I wouldn’t wish to say no harm of her, but she comes of a gipsy lot, and hasn’t never got into ways that us calls reverend, though I wouldn’t be saying no harm of a neighbour, ma’am.”
“No, you’d better not,” exclaimed a voice, for Tirzah was nearer or had better ears than Mrs Daniel Hewlett had suspected, “though I mayn’t go hypercriting about and making tales of my neighbours, as if you hadn’t got a man what ain’t to be called sober twice a week.”
“Hush! hush!” broke in Mrs Carbonel; “we don’t want to hear all this. I hope no one will tell us unkind things of our new neighbours, for we want to be friends with all of you, especially with that bright-eyed baby. How old is it?”
She made it smile by nodding to it, and Tirzah was mollified enough to say, “Four months, ma’am; but she have a tooth coming.”
“What’s her name?”
Tirzah showed her pretty white teeth in a smile. “Well, ma’am, my husband he doth want to call her Jane, arter his mother, ’cause ’tis a good short name, but I calls her Hoglah, arter my sister as died.”
“Then she hasn’t been christened?”
“No. You see we couldn’t agree, nor get gossips; and that there parson, he be always in such a mighty hurry, or I’d a had her half-baptized Hoglah, and then Reuben he couldn’t hinder it.”
Tirzah was getting quite confidential to Mrs Carbonel, and Dora meantime was talking to Molly Hewlett, but here it occurred to the former that they must not waste the women’s time, and they wished them good-bye, Dora fearing, however, that there would be a quarrel between Tirzah and Molly.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” she sighed, “couldn’t you make peace between those two,” she said; “they will fight it out.”
“No, I think the fear of the farmer and the need of finishing their work will avert the storm for the present at least,” said Mary, “and I thought the more I said, the worse accusations I should