“We must make allowance for other folk.”

“So us must; an’ I be allus doin’ it; so why the hell doan’t they make allowance for me?  That’s why I boil awver now an’ again—­damn it!  I gets nought but kicks for my halfpence—­allus have; an’ I won’t stand it from mortal man much longer!”

Chris kept her face, for Will’s views on conduct and man’s whole duty to man were no new thing.

“Us must keep patient, Will, ’specially with the auld.”

“I be patient.  It ’mazes me, looking back, to see what I have suffered in my time.  But a man’s a man, not a post or a holy angel.  Us wouldn’t hear such a deal about angels’ tempers either if they’d got to faace all us have.”

“That’s profanity an’ wickedness.”

“‘Tis truth.  Any fule can be a saint inside heaven; an’ them that was born theer and have flown ’bout theer all theer time, like birds in a wood, did ought to be even-tempered.  What’s to cross’em?”

“You shouldn’t say such things!”

Suddenly a light came into his eyes.

“I doan’t envy ’em anyway.  Think what it must be never to have no mother to love ’e!  They ’m poor, motherless twoads, for all their gold crowns an’ purple wings.”

“Will! whatever will ‘e say next?  Best go to Clem.  An’ forget what I spoke ‘bout Martin Grimbal an’ work.  You was wiser’n me in that.”

“I s’pose so.  If a man ban’t wiser ’n his sister, he’s like to have poor speed in life,” said Will.

Then he departed, but the events of that day were still very far from an end, and despite the warning of Chris, her brother soon stood on the verge of another quarrel.  It needed little to wake fresh storms in his breast and he criticised Clement’s reticence on the subject of his engagement in so dictatorial and hectoring a manner that the elder man quickly became incensed.  They wrangled for half an hour, Hicks in satirical humour, Will loud with assurances that he would have no underhand dealings where any member of his family was concerned.  Clement presently watched the other tramp off, and in his mind was a dim thought.  Could Blanchard forget the past so quickly?  Did he recollect that he, Clement Hicks, shared knowledge of it?  “He’s a fool, whichever way you look at him,” thought the poet; “but hardly such a fool as to forget that, or risk angering me of all men.”

Later in the day Will called at a tap-room, drank half a pint of beer, and detailed his injuries for the benefit of those in the bar.  He asked what man amongst them, situated as he had been, had acted otherwise; and a few, caring not a straw either way, declared he had showed good pluck and was to be commended; But the bulky Mr. Chapple—­he who assisted Billy Blee in wassailing Miller Lyddon’s apple-trees—­stoutly criticised Will, and told him that his conduct was much to blame.  The younger argued against this decision and explained, with the most luminous diction at his command, that ’twas in the offering of such a task to a penniless man its sting and offence appeared.