that he was like a cock
“Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She’s quite original in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig — that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now that’s an AEsop’s fable in a sentence.”
“But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of the farm next Michaelmas, eh?” said Mrs. Irwine.
“Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are must not go.”
“Ah, there’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day,” said Mrs. Irwine. “It struck me on Arthur’s birthday that the old man was a little shaken: he’s eighty-three, you know. It’s really an unconscionable age. It’s only women who have a right to live as long as that.”
“When they’ve got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,” said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother’s hand.
Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband’s occasional forebodings of a notice to quit with “There’s no knowing what may happen before Lady day”— one of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects under that hard condition.
Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in Hetty.
Processing your request, Please wait....
