“Never!” said Mrs. Bainton, as she set a steaming beef-steak pudding in its basin on the table and briskly untied the ends of the cloth in which it had been boiling.  “Never, Tom!  You don’t tell me!  The Five Sisters comin’ down!  Why, what is Oliver Leach thinking about?”

“Himself, I reckon!” responded her husband, “and his own partikler an’ malicious art o’ forestry.  Which consists in barin’ the land as if it was a judge’s chin, to be clean-shaved every marnin’.  My wurrd!  Won’t Passon Walden be just wild!  M’appen he’s heard of it already, for he seems main worrited about somethin’ or other.  I’ve allus thought ‘im wise-like an’ sensible for a man in the Church wot ain’t got much chance of knowin’ the wurrld, but he was jes’ meanderin’ along to-day—­meanderin’ an’ jabberin’ about a meek an’ quiet sperrit, as if any of us wanted that kind o’ thing ’ere!  Why it’s fightin’ all the time!  If ’tain’t Sir Morton Pippitt, it’s Leach, an’ if ‘tain’t Leach it’s Putty Leveson—­an’ if ’tain’t Leveson, why it’s Adam Frost an’ his wife, an’ if ‘tain’t Frost an’ his wife, why it’s you an’ me, old gel!  We can get up a breeze as well as any couple wot was ever jined in the bonds of ’oly matterimony!  Hor-hor-hor!  ‘Meek an’ quiet sperrit,’ sez he—­’have all of ye meek an’ quiet sperrits’!  Why he ain’t got one of ’is own!  Wait till he ‘ears of the Five Sisters comin’ down!  See ’im then!  Or wait till Miss Vancourt arrives an’ begins to muddle round with the church!”

“Nonsense!  She won’t muddle round with the church,” said Mrs. Bainton cheerfully, sitting down to dinner opposite her husband, ’What nesh fools men are, to be sure!  Every-one says she’s a fine lady ’customed to all sorts of show and gaiety and the like—­what will she want to do with the church?  Ten to one she never goes inside it!”

“You shouldn’t bet, old woman, ’tain’t moral,” said Bainton, with a chuckle; “You ain’t got ten to bet agin one—­we couldn’t spare so much.  If she doos nothing else, she’ll dekrate the church at ’Arvest ‘Ome an’ Christmas—­that’s wot leddies allus fusses about—­ dekratin’.  Lord, Lord!  The mess they makes when they starts on it, an’ the mischief they works!  Tearin’ down the ivy, scrattin’ up the moss, pullin’ an’ grabbin’ at the flowers wot’s taken months to grow,—­for all the wurrld as if they was cats out for a ’oliday.  I tell ye it’s been a speshel providence for us ’ere, that Passon Walden ain’t got no wife,—­if he ‘ad, she’d a been at the dekratin’ game long afore now.  Our church would be jes’ spoilt with a lot o’ trails o’ weed round it—­but you mark my wurrd!—­Miss Vancourt will be dekratin’ the Saint in the coffin at ’Arvest ‘Ome wi’ corn and pertaters an’ vegetable marrers, all a-growin’ and a-blowin’ afore we knows it.  There ain’t no sense o’ fitness in the feminine natur!”

Mrs. Bainton laughed good-naturedly.

“That’s quite true!” she agreed; “If there were, I shouldn’t have made Sunday pudding for a man who talks too much to eat it while it’s hot.  Keep your tongue in your mouth, Tom!—­use it for tastin’ jes’ now an’ agin!”