The old man’s hands on his stick shook more and more visibly.  Bygones of his youth had come back to him.

“Oh, I know!  I know!” cried Marcella, with an accent half of indignation, half of despair.  “It’s the whole wretched system.  It spoils those who’ve got, and those who haven’t got.  And there’ll be no mending it till the people get the land back again, and till the rights on it are common to all.”

“My! she do speak up, don’t she?” said Mrs. Jellison, grinning again at her companions.  Then, stooping forward with one of her wild movements, she caught Marcella’s arm—­“I’d like to hear yer tell that to Lord Maxwell, miss.  I likes a roompus, I do.”

Marcella flushed and laughed.

“I wouldn’t mind saying that or anything else to Lord Maxwell,” she said proudly.  “I’m not ashamed of anything I think.”

“No, I’ll bet you ain’t,” said Mrs. Jellison, withdrawing her hand.  “Now then, Patton, you say what you thinks.  You ain’t got no vote now you’re in the parish houses—­I minds that.  The quality don’t trouble you at ‘lection times.  This yoong man, Muster Wharton, as is goin’ round so free, promisin’ yer the sun out o’ the sky, iv yer’ll only vote for ‘im, so th’ men say—­ee don’t coom an’ set down along o’ you an’ me, an’ cocker of us up as ee do Joe Simmons or Jim Hurd here.  But that don’t matter.  Yur thinkin’s yur own, anyway.”

But she nudged him in vain.  Patton had suddenly run down, and there was no more to be got out of him.

Not only had nerves and speech failed him as they were wont, but in his cloudy soul there had risen, even while Marcella was speaking, the inevitable suspicion which dogs the relations of the poor towards the richer class.  This young lady, with her strange talk, was the new squire’s daughter.  And the village had already made up its mind that Richard Boyce was “a poor sort,” and “a hard sort” too, in his landlord capacity.  He wasn’t going to be any improvement on his brother—­not a haporth!  What was the good of this young woman talking, as she did, when there were three summonses as he, Patton, heard tell, just taken out by the sanitary inspector against Mr. Boyce for bad cottages?  And not a farthing given away in the village neither, except perhaps the bits of food that the young lady herself brought down to the village now and then, for which no one, in truth, felt any cause to be particularly grateful.  Besides, what did she mean by asking questions about the poaching?  Old Patton knew as well as anybody else in the village, that during Robert Boyce’s last days, and after the death of his sportsman son, the Mellor estate had become the haunt of poachers from far and near, and that the trouble had long since spread into the neighbouring properties, so that the Winterbourne and Maxwell keepers regarded it their most arduous business to keep watch on the men of Mellor.  Of course the young woman knew it all, and she and her father wanted to know more.  That was why she talked.  Patton hardened himself against the creeping ways of the quality.