Rhoda and Mrs. Sumfit came together down the trim pathway; and Robert now had a clear charge against Master Gammon.  He recommended an immediate departure.

“The horse ’ll bring himself home quite as well and as fast as Gammon will,” he said.

“But for the shakin’ and the joltin’, which tells o’ sovereigns and silver,” Mrs. Sumfit was observing to Rhoda, “you might carry the box—­ and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a poker and not break it, I couldn’t, nor get a single one through the slit;—­the sight I was, with a poker in my hand!  I do declare I felt azactly like a housebreaker;—­and no soul to notice what you carries.  Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so”—­Mrs. Sumfit performed a methodical “Ahem!” and noised the sole of her shoe on the gravel “so, and folks ’ll think it’s a mistake they made.”

“What’s that?”—­the farmer pointed at a projection under Rhoda’s shawl.

“It is a present, father, for my sister,” said Rhoda.

“What is it?” the farmer questioned again.

Mrs. Sumfit fawned before him penitently—­“Ah!  William, she’s poor, and she do want a little to spend, or she will be so nipped and like a frost-bitten body, she will.  And, perhaps, dear, haven’t money in her sight for next day’s dinner, which is—­oh, such a panic for a young wife! for it ain’t her hunger, dear William—­her husband, she thinks of.  And her cookery at a stand-still!  Thinks she, ’he will charge it on the kitchen;’ so unreasonable’s men.  Yes,” she added, in answer to the rigid dejection of his look, “I said true to you.  I know I said, ’Not a penny can I get, William,’ when you asked me for loans; and how could I get it?  I can’t get it now.  See here, dear!”

She took the box from under Rhoda’s shawl, and rattled it with a down turn and an up turn.

“You didn’t ask me, dear William, whether I had a money-box.  I’d ha’ told you so at once, had ye but asked me.  And had you said, “Gi’ me your money-box,” it was yours, only for your asking.  You do see, you can’t get any of it out.  So, when you asked for money I was right to say, I’d got none.”

The farmer bore with her dreary rattling of the box in demonstration of its retentive capacities.  The mere force of the show stopped him from retorting; but when, to excuse Master Gammon for his tardiness, she related that he also had a money-box, and was in search of it, the farmer threw up his head with the vigour of a young man, and thundered for Master Gammon, by name, vehemently wrathful at the combined hypocrisy of the pair.  He called twice, and his face was purple and red as he turned toward the cart, saying,—­

“We’ll go without the old man.”