“Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why,” said Bartle kindly, going up to Adam and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level with his own head.  “You’ve had a rough bit o’ road to get over since I saw you—­a rough bit o’ road.  But I’m in hopes there are better times coming for you.  I’ve got some news to tell you.  But I must get my supper first, for I’m hungry, I’m hungry.  Sit down, sit down.”

Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran too much to bone instead of brains.  Then came a piece of cheese and a quart jug with a crown of foam upon it.  He placed them all on the round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the chimney-corner, with Vixen’s hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf with a few books piled up in it on the other.  The table was as clean as if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs, which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Bartle had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be at the end of a summer’s day.

“Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up.  We’ll not talk about business till we’ve had our supper.  No man can be wise on an empty stomach.  But,” said Bartle, rising from his chair again, “I must give Vixen her supper too, confound her!  Though she’ll do nothing with it but nourish those unnecessary babbies.  That’s the way with these women—­they’ve got no head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to brats.”

He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost dispatch.

“I’ve had my supper, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, “so I’ll look on while you eat yours.  I’ve been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper betimes, you know:  they don’t keep your late hours.”

“I know little about their hours,” said Bartle dryly, cutting his bread and not shrinking from the crust.  “It’s a house I seldom go into, though I’m fond of the boys, and Martin Poyser’s a good fellow.  There’s too many women in the house for me:  I hate the sound of women’s voices; they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak—­always either a-buzz or a-squeak.  Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o’ the talk like a fife; and as for the young lasses, I’d as soon look at water-grubs.  I know what they’ll turn to—­stinging gnats, stinging gnats.  Here, take some ale, my boy:  it’s been drawn for you—­it’s been drawn for you.”

“Nay, Mr. Massey,” said Adam, who took his old friend’s whim more seriously than usual to-night, “don’t be so hard on the creaturs God has made to be companions for us.  A working-man ’ud be badly off without a wife to see to th’ house and the victual, and make things clean and comfortable.”