eave to a stranger."

"I can do what I will with my own," retorted Simon. "Look here,
Susanna, haven't you had that girl, Matabel, with you in place of
a child all these years? Don't she work like a slave? Don't she
thoroughly understand the business? Has she ever left the hogs
unmeated, or the cow unmilked? If it pleases you to go to market,
to be away for a week, a fortni't you know that when you come
home again everything will be just as you left it, the house
conducted respectable, and every drop o' ale and ounce o' 'backy
accounted for."

"I don't deny that Matabel's a good girl. But what has that to do
with the matter?"

"What! Why everything. What hinders me leavin' the whole pass'l
o' items, farm and Ship to her? She'll marry a stiff man as'll look
after the farm, and she'll mind the public-house every mite as
well as ever have you, old woman. That's a gal as knows chalk from
cheese."

Mrs. Verstage leaned back with a gasp of dismay and a cramp at
her heart. She dropped her hands on her lap.

"You ain't speaking serious, Simon?"

"I might do wuss," said he; "and the wust I could do 'ad be to
give everythin' to that wastrel, Iver, who don't know the vally of
a good farm and of a well-established public-house. I don't want
nobody after I'm dead and gone to see rack and ruin where all
were plenty and good order both on land and in house, and that's
what things would come to wi' Iver here."

"Simon, he is a man now. He was a boy, and what he did as a boy
he won't do as a man."

"He's a dauber of paints still."

The taverner stood up. "I'll go and cast an eye over the hay-field,"
he said. "It makes me all of a rage like to think o' that boy."

He threw away the broken pipe and walked off.

Mrs. Verstage's brain spun like a teetotum; her heart turned cold.

She was startled out of her musings by the voice of Mehetabel, who
said, "Mother, it is so hot in the kitchen that I have come out to
cool myself. Where is father? I thought I heard him talking with
you?"

"He's gone to the hay-field. He won't answer Iver's letter. He's
just about as hard as one o' them Hammer Ponds when frozen to the
bottom, one solid lump."

"No, mother, he is not hard," said Mehetabel, "but he does not
like to seem to give way all at once. You write to Iver and tell
him to come here; that were better than for me to write. It will
not seem right for him to be invited home by me. The words from
home must be penned by you just