Mrs. Boulby curtseyed humbly.  “You think bad of me, sir, for keeping a public; but I love your son as my own, and if I might presume to say so, Mr. Eccles, you will be proud of him too before you die.  I know no more than you how he fell yesterday, but I do know he’d not been drinking, and have got bitter bad enemies.”

“And that’s not astonishing, Missis.”

“No, Mr. Eccles; and a man who’s brave besides being good soon learns that.”

“Well spoken, Missis.”

“Is Robert to hear he’s denied his father’s house?”

“I never said that, Mrs. Boulby.  Here’s my principle—­My house is open to my blood, so long as he don’t bring downright disgrace on it, and then any one may claim him that likes I won’t give him money, because I know of a better use for it; and he shan’t ride my beasts, because he don’t know how to treat ’em.  That’s all.”

“And so you keep within the line of your duty, sir,” the widow summed his speech.

“So I hope to,” said the farmer.

“There’s comfort in that,” she replied.

“As much as there’s needed,” said he.

The widow curtseyed again.  “It’s not to trouble you, sir, I called.  Robert—­thanks be to Above!—­is not hurt serious, though severe.”

“Where’s he hurt?” the farmer asked rather hurriedly.

“In the head, it is.”

“What have you come for?”

“First, his best hat.”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the farmer.  “Well, if that ’ll mend his head it’s at his service, I’m sure.”

Sick at his heartlessness, the widow scattered emphasis over her concluding remarks.  “First, his best hat, he wants; and his coat and clean shirt; and they mend the looks of a man, Mr. Eccles; and it’s to look well is his object:  for he’s not one to make a moan of himself, and doctors may starve before he’d go to any of them.  And my begging prayer to you is, that when you see your son, you’ll not tell him I let you know his head or any part of him was hurt.  I wish you good morning, Mr. Eccles.”

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Boulby.  You’re a respectable woman.”

“Not to be soaped,” she murmured to herself in a heat.

The apparently medicinal articles of attire were obtained from Aunt Anne, without a word of speech on the part of that pale spinster.  The deferential hostility between the two women acknowledged an intervening chasm.  Aunt Anne produced a bundle, and placed the hat on it, upon which she had neatly pinned a tract, “The Drunkard’s Awakening!” Mrs. Boulby glanced her eye in wrath across this superscription, thinking to herself, “Oh, you good people! how you make us long in our hearts for trouble with you.”  She controlled the impulse, and mollified her spirit on her way home by distributing stray leaves of the tract to the outlying heaps of rubbish, and to one inquisitive pig, who was looking up from a badly-smelling sty for what the heavens might send him.