their
shirt sleeves and their stocking feet, and pushing on their boots
and clattering out to the stable, and shouting to the horses that are
stamping in their stalls; and then you yoursef busy as Thop's wife
laying the cups and saucers, and sending the boys to the well for water,
and filling the big crock to the brim, and hanging the kettle on the
hook, and setting somebody to blow the fire while the gorse flames and
crackles, and bustling here and bustling there, and stirring yoursef
terr'ble, and getting breakfast over, and starting everybody away to his
work in the fields--aw, there's nothing like it in the world."

"And do _you_ think that, Nelly?" said Jenny.

"Why, yes; why shouldn't I?" said Nelly.

"Well, well," said Jenny. "'There's nowt so queer as folk,' as they say
in Manchester.

"What do you mean, Jenny Crow?"

"I fancy I see you," said Jenny, "bowling off to Balla--what d'ye call
it?--and doing all that _by yourself_."

"Oh!" said Nelly.

Mrs. Quiggin had begun to speak in a voice that was something between a
shrill laugh and a cry, and she ended with a smothered gurgle, such as
comes from the throat of a pea-hen. After breakfast Peggy Quine came
chirping around with a hundred inquiries about the packing of luggage
which was then proceeding, with a view to the carriage that had been
ordered for eleven o'clock. Mrs. Quiggin betrayed only the most languid
interest in these hurrying operations, and settled herself with her
needlework in a chair near to Jenny Crow. Jenny watched her, and
thought, "Now, wouldn't she jump at a good excuse for not going at all?"

Presently Mrs. Quiggin said, in a tone of well-acted unconcern, "And
so you say that the poor man you tell me of is still loving his wife in
spite of all she has done to him?"

"Yes, Nelly. All men are like that--more fools they," said Jenny.

Nelly's face brightened over the needles in her hand, and her parted
lips seemed to whisper, "Bless them!" But in a note of delicious
insincerity she only said aloud, "Not all, Jenny; surely not all."

"Yes, all," said Jenny, with emphasis. "Do you think I don't know the
men better than you do?"

Nelly dropped her needles and raised her face. "Why, Jenny," she said,
"however can that be?--you've never even been married."

"That's why, my dear," said Jenny.

Nelly laughed; then returning to the attack, she said, with a
poor pretense at a yawn, "So you think a man may love a woman even
after--afte