“Eh? What?”
“I say, why don’t you give it up quietly?”
“Speak up; I’m a little hard of hearing.”
“I say, why don’t you give it up quietly?” roared the speaker to a little bent old man, with a weak, thin, piping voice, and a sharp look that gave him somewhat the air of a very attenuated sparrow in a severe frost, his shrunken legs, in tight yellow leather leggings, seeming to help the idea.
“Don’t shout at me like that, Master Portlock. I arn’t deaf, only a trifle hard of hearing when I’ve got a cowd—just a trifle, you know.”
“Have you got a cold?” asked the man addressed, a sturdy-looking, fresh-coloured, middle-aged man, with a very bluff manner, and a look of prosperity in his general appearance that made him seem thoroughly adapted to his office. In fact, he was just the man that a country clergyman would be glad to elect at a vestry meeting for vicar’s churchwarden. “Eh?”
“I—say—have—you—got—a—cold? Hang him, how deaf he is!”
“Oh, no! oh, no!” chirped the little old man, sharply; “I’m not deaf. Just a little thick i’ the ears. Yes; I’ve got a cowd. It’s settled here—just here,” he piped, striking himself upon his thin chest with the hand that held his stick. “A bad cowd—a nasty cowd as keeps me awake all night, doing nowt but cough. It’s that stove, that’s what it is, Master Portlock.”
“Nonsense, man! It would keep the cold off.”
“Eh?”
“I say it would keep the cold off.”
“Nay, nay; not it. A nasty, brimstone-smelling, choking thing, as sends out a reek as settles on your chest. Stove, indeed! What do we want with your noo-fangled stoves? We never had no stoves before. Here he stops away from town all these years, only coming now and then, and now all at once he’s back at the Rectory, and nothing’s right. Mr Paulby never said a word about no stoves.”
“No; but see how damp the church was.”
“Eh?”
“Eh?”
“Damp,” roared the Churchwarden; “church—damp. Cush—shuns—moul—dee.”
“Chah! Nonsense, Master Portlock. Damp? Suppose it was? A chutch ought to be damp, and smell solemn like of owd age and venerations. Mouldy? Ay; why not?” he piped. “’Mind ta chutch folk o’ decay, and what they’re comin’ to some day. I once went to London, Master Portlock—forty year ago now, sir—forty year ago. It was cowd weather, and I got ’most froze a’ top o’ the coach, and it was a ’mazin’ plaace. Ay, that it was. But you’ve been there?”
“Ay, lots o’ times in my life.”
“Niver been in your life? Then don’t go. Niver go if you can help it. Owd Mr Burton paid for me to go, he did—owd vicar’s father, you know—and he said to me a did, ‘Mind ta go and see some o’ the London chutches, Warmoth,’ he says; and I did, and bless thou, pretty places they weer. I niver see a playhouse, but Sammy Mason wint to one i’ London, and he towd me what it were like, and the chutch I went into i’ the City weer just like it. Why, mun, theer were a big picter ower the ’mandments, and carpets on the floors, and all the pews was full o’ red cushions an’ basses, just as if they was all squires’ sittings, and brass rails and red curtins an’ grand candlesticks. Then reight up i’ the galler