“Why not?”

“Well, sir, there is a saying—­But you’ll excuse me.”

“Go on, Matthew.”

“There is a saying as how ’you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Just so, sir.  Now, Miss Thoroughbung is a very nice lady.”

“I don’t think she’s a nice lady at all.”

“But—­Of course it’s not becoming in me to speak against my betters, and as a menial servant I never would.”

“Go on, Matthew.”

“Miss Thoroughbung is—­”

“Go on, Matthew.”

“Well;—­she is a sow’s ear.  Ain’t she, now?  The servants here never would have looked upon her as a silk purse.”

“Wouldn’t they?”

“Never!  She has a way with her just as though she didn’t care for silk purses.  And it’s my mind, sir, that she don’t.  She wishes, however, to be uppermost, and if she had come here she’d have said so.”

“That can never be.  Thank God, that can never be!”

“Oh, no!  Brewers is brewers, and must be.  There’s Mr. Joe—­He’s very well, no doubt.”

“I haven’t the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

“Him as is to marry Miss Molly.  But Miss Molly ain’t the head of the family; is she, sir?” Here the squire shook his head.  “You’re the head of the family, sir.”

“I suppose so.”

“And is—­I might make so bold as to speak?”

“Go on, Matthew.”

“Miss Thoroughbung would be a little out of place at Buston Hall.  Now, as to Miss Puffle—­”

“Miss Puffle is a lady,—­or was.”

“No doubt, sir.  The Puffles is not quite equal to the Prospers, as I can hear.  But the Puffles is ladies—­and gentlemen.  The servants below all give it up to them that they’re real gentlefolk.  But—­”

“Well?”

“She demeaned herself terribly with young Tazlehurst.  They all said as there were more where that came from.”

“What should they mean by that?”

“She’d indulge in low ’abits,—­such as never would have been put up with at Buston Hall,—­a-cursing and a-swearing—­”

“Miss Puffle!”

“Not herself,—­I don’t say that; but it’s like enough if you ’ad heard all.  But them as lets others do it almost does it themselves.  And them as lets others drink sperrrits o’ mornings come nigh to having a dram down their own throats.”

“Oh laws!” exclaimed Mr. Prosper, thinking of the escape he had had.

“You wouldn’t have liked it, sir, if there had been a bottle of gin in the bedroom!” Here Mr. Prosper hid his face among the bedclothes.  “It ain’t all that comes silk out of the skein that does to make a purse of.”

There were difficulties in the pursuit of matrimony of which Mr. Prosper had not thought.  His imagination at once pictured to himself a bride with a bottle of gin under her pillow, and he went on shivering till Matthew almost thought that he had been attacked by an ague-fit.