‘Yes, and mere toleration, to say nothing of opposition, at least so far as persons are concerned, is seldom necessary. It is generally thought that what is called dramatic power is a poetic gift, but it is really an indispensable virtue to all of us if we are to be happy.’ Mrs Caffyn did not take much interest in abstract statements. ‘You remember,’ she said, turning to Baruch, ‘that man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common? He wasn’t a Surrey man: he came out of the shires.’ ‘Very well.’ ‘He’s married that Skelton girl; married her the week afore I left. There isn’t no love lost there, but the girl’s father said he’d murder him if he didn’t, and so it come off. How she ever brought herself to it gets over me. She has that big farm-house, and he’s made a fine drawing-room out of the livin’ room on the left-hand side as you go in, and put a new grate in the kitchen and turned that into the livin’ room, and they does the cooking in the back kitchen, but for all that, if I’d been her, I’d never have seen his face no more, and I’d have packed off to Australia.’ ‘Does anybody go near them?’ ‘Near them! of course they do, and, as true as I’m a-sittin’ here, our parson, who married them, went to the breakfast. It isn’t Chorley as I blame so much; he’s a poor, snivellin’ creature, and he was frightened, but it’s the girl. She doesn’t care for him no more than me, and then again, although, as I tell you, he’s such a poor creature, he’s awful cruel and mean, and she knows it. But what was I a-goin’ to say? Never shall I forget that wedding. You know as it’s a short cut to the church across the farmyard at the back of my house. The parson, he was rather late—I suppose he’d been giving himself a finishin’ touch—and, as it had been very dry weather, he went across the straw and stuff just at the edge like of the yard. There was a pig under the straw—pigs, my dear,’ turning to Clara, ‘nuzzle under the straw so as you can’t see them. Just as he came to this pig it started up and upset him, and he fell and straddled across its back, and the Lord have mercy on me if it didn’t carry him at an awful rate, as if he was a jockey at Epsom races, till it come to a puddle of dung water, and then down he plumped in it. You never see’d a man in such a pickle! I heer’d the pig a-squeakin’ like mad, and I ran to the door, and I called out to him, and I says, “Mr Ormiston, won’t you come in here?” and though, as you know, he allus hated me, he had to come. Mussy on us, how he did stink, and he saw me turn up my nose, and he was wild with rage, and he called the pig a filthy beast. I says to him as that was the pig’s way and the pig didn’t know who it was who was a-ridin’ it, and I took his coat off and wiped his stockings, and sent to the rectory for another coat, and he crept up under the hedge to his garden, and went home, and the people at church had to wait for an hour.