"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your
scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty
business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you were to spit
fire and brimstone itself at her. Here," she added, holding out a
spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long
black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea
you must fetch it from in-doors."
"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer.
"Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver. "Even when I opened the
door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from gentlemen,
or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don't think maister's
slept at all well to-night. He's anxious about his daughter; and I
know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for my own."
When the old woman had gone Creedle said, "He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid of
his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a
maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in
'em--'tis tempting Providence."
"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said young
Timothy Tangs.
"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner. "Always a teuny,
delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind.
She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just
about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay, and a long
apprenticeship 'twas. I served that master of mine six years and three
hundred and fourteen days."
The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering
their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years.
"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old
Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman,
and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her
husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd take her up like
a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if
he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as
nesh as her mother was. But here he comes."
Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court
from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came
straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite
gone.