I don't
hold wi' thinkin' about it when it's done."

"I know one," said old Patton, slily, "that fretted about _her_ darter
when it didn't do her no good."

He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, a
spectator of the women's humours. He was a little hunched man, twisted
and bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of field
work. His small face was almost lost, dog-like, under shaggy hair and
overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white. He had a look of irritable
eagerness, seldom, however, expressed in words. A sudden passion in the
faded blue eyes; a quick spot of red in his old cheeks; these Marcella
had often noticed in him, as though the flame of some inner furnace
leapt. He had been a Radical and a rebel once in old rick-burning days,
long before he lost the power in his limbs and came down to be thankful
for one of the parish almshouses. To his social betters he was now a
quiet and peaceable old man, well aware of the cakes and ale to be got
by good manners; but in the depths of him there were reminiscences and
the ghosts of passions, which were still stirred sometimes by causes not
always intelligible to the bystander.

He had rarely, however, physical energy enough to bring any
emotion--even of mere worry at his physical ills--to the birth. The
pathetic silence of age enwrapped him more and more. Still he could gibe
the women sometimes, especially Mrs. Jellison, who was in general too
clever for her company.

"Oh, you may talk, Patton!" said Mrs. Jellison, with a little flash of
excitement. "You do like to have your talk, don't you! Well, I dare say
I _was_ orkard with Isabella. I won't go for to say I _wasn't_ orkard,
for I _was_. She should ha' used me to 't before, if she wor took that
way. She and I had just settled down comfortable after my old man went,
and I didn't see no sense in it, an' I don't now. She might ha' let the
men alone. She'd seen enough o' the worrit ov 'em."

"Well, she did well for hersen," said Mrs. Brunt, with the same gentle
melancholy. "She married a stiddy man as 'ull keep her well all her
time, and never let her want for nothink."

"A sour, wooden-faced chap as iver I knew," said Mrs. Jellison,
grudgingly. "I don't have nothink to say to him, nor he to me. He thinks
hissen the Grand Turk, he do, since they gi'en him his uniform, and made
him full keeper. A nassty, domineerin' sort, I calls him. He's allus
makin' bad blood wi' the yoong fel