r? John Kenneby would have given her
what beer was good for her, quite regularly.

Then he went out and took his walk, sauntering away to the gate of
Orley Farm, and looking up the avenue. He ventured up some way, and
there at a distance before him he saw Lucius Mason walking up and
down, from the house towards the road and back again, swinging a
heavy stick in his hand, with his hat pressed down over his brows.
Kenneby had no desire to speak to him; so he returned to the gate,
and thence went back to the station, escaping the town by a side
lane; and in this way he got back to London without holding further
communication with the people of Hamworth.

CHAPTER XLIII

JOHN KENNEBY'S COURTSHIP

"She's as sweet a temper, John, as ever stirred a lump of sugar in
her tea," said Mrs. Moulder to her brother, as they sat together over
the fire in Great St. Helen's on that same evening,--after his return
from Hamworth. "That she is,--and so Smiley always found her. 'She's
always the same,' Smiley said to me many a day. And what can a man
want more than that?"

"That's quite true," said John.

"And then as to her habits--I never knew her take a drop too much
since first I set eyes on her, and that's nigh twenty years ago. She
likes things comfortable;--and why shouldn't she, with two hundred a
year of her own coming out of the Kingsland Road brick-fields? As for
dress, her things is beautiful, and she is the woman that takes care
of 'em! Why, I remember an Irish tabinet as Smiley gave her when
first that venture in the brick-fields came up money; if that tabinet
is as much as turned yet, why, I'll eat it. And then, the best of
it is, she'll have you to-morrow. Indeed she will; or to-night, if
you'll ask her. Goodness gracious! if there ain't Moulder!" And the
excellent wife jumped up from her seat, poked the fire, emptied the
most comfortable arm-chair, and hurried out to the landing at the top
of the stairs. Presently the noise of a loudly wheezing pair of lungs
was heard, and the commercial traveller, enveloped from head to foot
in coats and comforters, made his appearance. He had just returned
from a journey, and having deposited his parcels and packages at
the house of business of Hubbles and Grease in Houndsditch, had now
returned to the bosom of his family. It was a way he had, not to let
his wife know exactly the period of his return. Whether he thought
that by so doing he might keep her always on the alert