“Na-a-y,” said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor.  “But the wench takes arter her mother.  I’d hard work t’ hould her in, an’ she married i’ spite o’ me—­a feller wi’ on’y two head o’ stock when there should ha’ been ten on’s farm—­she might well die o’ th’ inflammation afore she war thirty.”

It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son’s question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Hetty than to his son’s children.  Her mother’s fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel’s blood in her veins.

“Poor thing, poor thing!” said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness.  “She’d but bad luck.  But Hetty’s got as good a chance o’ getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i’ this country.”

After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish.  But instead of that, Hetty, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day’s repressed sadness.

“Hegh, hegh!” said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, “don’t let’s have any crying.  Crying’s for them as ha’ got no home, not for them as want to get rid o’ one.  What dost think?” he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab’s antennae.

“Think?  Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi’ that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o’ nights.  What’s the matter now, Hetty?  What are you crying at?”

“Why, she’s been wanting to go for a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Poyser.  “I tell her we can do better for her nor that.”

“I thought she’d got some maggot in her head, she’s gone about wi’ her mouth buttoned up so all day.  It’s all wi’ going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her.  She thinks it ’ud be a finer life than being wi’ them as are akin to her and ha’ brought her up sin’ she war no bigger nor Marty.  She thinks there’s nothing belongs to being a lady’s maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I’ll be bound.  It’s what rag she can get to stick on her as she’s thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn’t like to be the mawkin i’ the field, for then she’d be made o’ rags inside and out.  I’ll never gi’ my consent to her going for a lady’s maid, while she’s got good friends to take care on her till she’s married to somebody better nor one o’ them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an’ must live on the fat o’ the land, an’s like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him.”