t gestures and shouts expressing extremities of the need for
haste, would fail to accelerate his steps, so they allowed him to come on
at his own equal pace, steady as Time, with the peculiar lopping bend of
knees which jerked the moveless trunk regularly upward, and the ancient
round eyes fixed contemplatively forward. There was an affectingness in
this view of the mechanical old man bearing his poor hoard to bestow it.

Robert said out, unawares, "He mustn't be let to part with h'old
pennies."

"No;" the farmer took him up; "nor I won't let him."

"Yes, father!" Rhoda intercepted his address to Master Gammon. "Yes,
father!" she hardened her accent. "It is for my sister. He does a good
thing. Let him do it."

"Mas' Gammon, what ha' ye got there?" the farmer sung out.

But Master Gammon knew that he was about his own business. He was a
difficult old man when he served the farmer; he was quite unmanageable in
his private affairs.

Without replying, he said to Mrs. Sumfit,--

"I'd gummed it."

The side of the box showed that it had been made adhesive, for the sake
of security, to another substance.

"That's what's caused ye to be so long, Mas' Gammon?"

The veteran of the fields responded with a grin, designed to show a
lively cunning.

"Deary me, Mas' Gammon, I'd give a fortnight's work to know how much
you'm saved, now, I would. And, there! Your comfort's in your heart. And
it shall be paid to you. I do pray heaven in mercy to forgive me," she
whimpered, "if ever knowin'ly I hasted you at a meal, or did deceive you
when you looked for the pickings of fresh-killed pig. But if you only
knew how--to cookit spoils the temper of a woman! I'd a aunt was cook in
a gentleman's fam'ly, and daily he dirtied his thirteen plates--never
more nor never less; and one day--was ever a woman punished so! her best
black silk dress she greased from the top to the bottom, and he sent down
nine clean plates, and no word vouchsafed of explanation. For
gentlefolks, they won't teach themselves how it do hang together with
cooks in a kitchen--"

"Jump up, Mas' Gammon," cried the farmer, wrathful at having been
deceived by two members of his household, who had sworn to him, both,
that they had no money, and had disregarded his necessity. Such being
human nature!

Mrs. Sumfit confided the termination of her story to Rhoda; or suggested
rather, at what distant point it might end; and then, giving Master
Gammon's box to her custody,