“What d’ee mean by it?” she demanded.  “As if I hadn’ suffered enough in mind a’ready, but you must come pokin’ money into my oven and atween me an’ my children!  Be you mad, or only wicked?  Or is it witchcraft you’d be layin’ on us? . . .  Take up your gold, however you came by it, an’ fetch your shadow off my doorstep, or I’ll—­” She advanced on poor Nicky-Nan, who backed out to the side gate and into the lane before her wrath, and found himself of a sudden taken on both flanks:  on the one by Mrs Climoe, who had spied upon his visit and found her malicious curiosity too much for her; on the other by gentle old Mr Hambly returning from a stroll along the cliffs.

“Hullo!  Tut—­tut—­what is this?” exclaimed Mr Hambly.  “A neighbours’ quarrel, and between folks I know to be so respectworthy? . . .  Oh, come now—­come, good souls!”

“A little nigher than naybours, Minister,” put in Mrs Climoe.  “That is if you had eyes an’ ears in your head.”

Nicky-Nan swung about on her:  but she rested a hand on either hip and was continuing. “‘Naybours,’ you said, sir?  ‘Naybours’?  Him accused by public talk for a German spy—­”

“Hush, Mrs Climoe!  Of all the Commandments, ma’am, the one most in lack of observance hereabouts, to my observation, is that which forbids bearing false witness against a neighbour.  To a charitable mind that includes hasty witness.”

“There’s another, unless I disremember,” snapped Mrs Climoe, “that forbids ’ee to covet your naybour’s wife.”

While Mr Hambly sought for a gentle reproof for this, Mrs Penhaligon, pale of face, rested a hand against her gate-post, and said she very gently but in a white scorn—­

“What is this talk of naybours, quarrelin’ or comfortin’ or succourin’ or bearin’ witness?  There be naybours, an’”—­she pointed a finger at Mrs Climoe—­“there be livers-by.  Now stroll along, the lot of ’ee, and annoy somebody else that lives unprotected!”

She said it so quietly and decisively, standing motionless, that Lippity-Libby, coming around the corner of the lane with paste-pot and brush, and with a roll of bills tucked in his armpit, mistook the group for a chance collection of cheerful gossips.  He drew up, lowered his pail, and began in a business-like way to slap paste upon the upper flap of a loft-door across the way, chatting the while over his shoulder.

“Good evenin’, naybours!  Now what (says you to yourselves) might I be carryin’ here under my arm in the cool o’ the day.  Is it a Bye-Law?  No, it is not a Bye-Law.  Or is it a Tender?  No, it is not a Tender.  Or is it a Bankrup’ Stock, or a Primrose Feet, or at the worst a Wesleyan Anniversary?  Or peradventure is it a Circus? . . .  Sold again!  ‘Tis a Recruitin’ Meetin’, an’ for Saturday.”

Having slapped on the paste, he unfolded a bill and eyed it critically.

“’YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU.’—­That’s pretty good for Polpier, eh?  Flatterin’, one might almost say.”