Clara. [Slowly, after a short pause.] I do not think she can have forgotten those days, George.

George. [Getting up and speaking harshly.] They’re best forgot.  Put them away.  There be briars and brambles and thorns and sommat of all which do hurt the flesh of man atween that time and this’n.

[Clara turns her head away and furtively presses her handkerchief to her eyes.  George looks gloomily on the floor.  Emily enters.

Emily.  George, what are you at sitting at the kitchen table I’d like to know?

[George gets hastily off.  Both children look up from their book.

Emily. [Looking freezingly at Clara.] ’Tis plain as a turnpike what you’ve been after, young person.  If you was my serving wench, ’tis neck and crop as you should be thrown from the door.

Clara.  What for, mistress?

Emily.  What for?  You have the impudence to ask what for?  I’ll soon tell you.  For making a fool of George and setting your cap at him and scandalising of my innocent children in their own kitchen.

George.  This be going a bit too far, missis.  I’ll not have things said like that.

Emily.  Then you may turn out on to the roads where you were took from—­a grizzling little roadsters varmint.  You do cost more’n what you eats nor what we get of work from out of your body, you great hulk.

Clara. [Springing up angrily.] O I’ll not hear such things said.  I’ll not.

Emily.  Who asked you to speak?  Get you upstairs and pull your mistress out of bed—­and curl the ringlets of her hair and dust the flour on to her face.  ’Tis about all you be fit for.

Clara. [Angrily going to the stair door.] Very well.  ’Tis best that I should go.  I might say something you would not like.

George. [Advancing towards Emily.] Look you here, mistress.  I’ve put up with it going on for fifteen years.  But sometimes ’tis almost more nor I can bear.  If ’twasn’t for Master Thomas I’d have cleared out this long time ago.

Emily.  Don’t flatter yourself as Thomas needs you, my man.

George.  We has always been good friends, farmer and me.  ’Tis not for what I gets from he nor for what he do get out of I as we do hold together.  But ’tis this—­as he and I do understand one another.

Emily.  We’ll see what master has to say when I tell him how you was found sitting on the kitchen table and love-making with that saucy piece of London trash.

George.  I’m off.  I’ve no patience to listen any longer.  You called me roadster varmint.  Well, let it be so.  On the road I was born and on the road I was picked from my dead mother’s side, and I count as ’tis on the road as I shall breathe my last.  But for all that, I’ll not have road dirt flung on me by no one.  For, roadsters varmint though I be, there be things which I do hold brighter nor silver and cleaner nor new opened leaves, and I’ll not have defilement throwed upon them.