ying that husbands is troublesome, Mrs. Hankey, and sons
is worse; but all the same I stand up for 'em both, and I wish Miss
Elisabeth had got one of the one and half a dozen of the other. Mark my
words, she'll never do better, taking him all round, than Master
Christopher."

Mrs. Hankey sighed. "I only hope she'll find it out before it is too
late, and he is either laid in an early grave or else married to a
handsomer woman, as the case may be, and both ways out of her reach. But
I doubt it. She was a dark baby, if you remember, was Miss Elisabeth;
and I never trust them as has been dark babies, and never shall."

"And how is Peter's toothache now?" inquired Mrs. Bateson, who was a
more tender-hearted matron than Peter's mother.

"Oh! it's no better; and I know no one more aggravating than folks who
keep sayin' they are no better when you ask 'em how they are. It always
seems so ungrateful. Only this morning I asked our Peter how his tooth
was, and he says, 'No better, mother; it was so bad in the night that I
fairly wished I was dead.' 'Don't go wishing that,' says I; 'for if you
was dead you'd have far worse pain, and it 'ud last for ever and ever.'
I really spoke quite sharp to him, I was that sick of his grumbling; but
it didn't seem to do him no good."

"Speaking sharp seldom does do much good," Mrs. Bateson remarked
sapiently, "except to them as speaks."

CHAPTER V

THE MOAT HOUSE

You thought you knew me in and out
And yet you never knew
That all I ever thought about
Was you.

Sedgehill High Street is nothing but a part of the great high road which
leads from Silverhampton to Studley and Slipton and the other towns of
the Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it
passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment,
after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly
wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the
pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches
off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes
to a place where it evidently experiences a difference of opinion as to
which is the better course to pursue--an experience not confined to
lanes. But in this respect lanes are happier than men and women, in that
they are able to pursue both courses, and so learn for themselves which
is the wiser one, as is the case with this particular