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.”

Mrs. Sumfit then intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening over the mischances which befel poor people when they grew infirm, or met with accident, and what “useless clays” they were; and yet they had their feelings.  It was a long and confidential talk on a summer evening; and, at the end of it, Master Gammon walked into Wrexby, and paid a visit to Mr. Hammond, the carpenter, who produced two strong saving-boxes excellently manufactured by his own hand, without a lid to them, or lock and key:  so that there would be no getting at the contents until the boxes were full, or a pressing occasion counselled the destruction of the boxes.  A constant subject of jest between Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon was, as to which first of them would be overpowered by curiosity to know the amount of their respective savings; and their confessions of mutual weakness and futile endeavours to extract one piece of gold from the hoard.

“And now, think it or not,” said Mrs. Sumfit, “I got that power over him, from doctorin’ him, and cookin’ for him, I persuaded him to help my poor Dahly in my blessed’s need.  I’d like him to do it by halves, but he can’t.”

Master Gammon appeared round a corner of the house, his box, draped by his handkerchief, under his arm.  The farmer and Robert knew, when he was in sight, that gestures and shouts expressing extremities of the need for haste, would fail to accelerate his steps, so they allowed him to come on at his own equal pace, steady as Time, with the peculiar lopping bend of knees which jerked the moveless trunk regularly upward, and the ancient round eyes fixed contemplatively forward.  There was an affectingness in this view of the mechanical old man bearing his poor hoard to bestow it.

Robert said out, unawares, “He mustn’t be let to part with h’old pennies.”

“No;” the farmer took him up; “nor I won’t let him.”