stie something horribly nasty for her
ingratitude."

"Nobody changes," echoed the doctor. "She will be at her drugs again
before the month is out."

A little beyond the wheelwright's, Mr. Carnegie pulled up at a spot by
the wayside where an itinerant tinker sat in the shade with his brazier
hot, doing a good stroke of work on the village kettles and pots: "Eh,
Gampling, here you are again! They bade me at home look out for you and
tell you to call. There is a whole regiment of cripples to mend."

"Then let 'em march to Hampton, sir--they'll get back some time this
side o' Christmas," said the tinker, with a surly cunning glance out of
the corner of his eye. "Your women's so mighty hard to please that I'm
not meaning to call again; I prefers to work where I gives
satisfaction."

"I did hear something of a pan new bottomed to mend a hole in its side;
but what is that amongst friends? Mistakes will occur in the
best-regulated businesses."

"You're likely to know, sir--there's a sight o' folks dropping off quite
unaccountable else. I'm not dependent on one nor another, and what I
says I stands to: I'll never call at Dr. Carnegie's back door again
while that Irish lass is about his kitchen; she's give me the rough side
of her tongue once, but she won't do it no more."

"Then good-day to you, Gampling; I can't part with the Irish lass at
your price."

A sturdy laborer came along the road eating a hunch of bread and cheese.
Mr. Carnegie asked him how his wife did. The answer was crabbed: "She's
never naught to boast on, and she's allus worse after a spiritchus
visit: parson's paying her one now. Can you tell me, Mr. Carnegie, sir,
why parson chooses folk's dinner-time to drop in an' badger 'em about
church? Old parson never did." He did not stay to have his puzzle
elucidated, but trudged heavily on.

"Mr. Wiley does not seem very popular yet," observed Bessie.

"He is more so than he was. But his wife, who helps the poor liberally
in the winter, is of twice the use in the parish that he is, with his
inopportune 'spiritchus visits.' I have remonstrated with him about
going to the cottages between twelve and one, when dinner is being eaten
and the men want a bit of rest, but he professes that it is the only
time to catch them in-doors. I suppose Molton won't bear it, and takes
up his food and walks out. Yet Beechhurst might have a worse pastor than
poor Wiley. He is a man I pity--a martyr to dyspepsia and a gloomy
im