Cripps was in no hurry to be shown in. He felt that he had a ticklish job to carry through, and he might drop the handles if himself were touched amiss. And he thought that he could get on much better with a clever woman there to help him. "Plaize, your Worship," he began, coming in, with his finger to his forelock, and his stiff knee sticking out. "Don't 'ee run away now, Mary, that's a dear; you knows all the way-bills; and his Worship will allow of you." "Why, Cripps," Mr. Oglander exclaimed, "you are making a very great fuss to-night; and you look as if you had been run over. Even if it is half-a-crown, Cripps, you are come to prove against me--put it down. I will not dispute it. I know that you would rather wrong yourself than me." The old gentleman was tired, and he did not want to talk. "In coorse, in coorse," said Zacchary (as if every man preferred to wrong himself), "but the point is a different thing; and, Mary, speak up, and say you know it is." "Yes, sir, I do assure you now," said Mary, "the point is altogether quite a different sort of thing." "Then why can't you come to it?" cried the Squire; "is it that you want to marry one another?" Mary's face blushed to a fine young colour; and Cripps made a nod at her, as if he meant to think of it, but must leave that for another evening. "I never could abide such stuff," muttered Mary, "as if all the world was a-made of wives and husbands!" The Squire sat calmly with his head upon his hand, and his white hair glistening in the lamplight, as he gazed from one to the other, with a smile of melancholy amusement. It would be a great discomfort to him to lose Mary Hookham's services; and he thought it a little unkind of her to leave him in this sad loneliness; but he had not lived threescore years and ten without knowing what the way of the world is. Therefore, if Cripps had made up his mind--as the women had long been declaring that he as a man was bound to do--Mr. Oglander would be the last to complain, or say a word to damp them. The Carrier himself had some idea that such was the working of the Squire's mind. "Now, your Worship," he said, putting Mary away to a place where she could use her handkerchief, "will 'ee plaize to hearken, without your own opinion before hast heard what there be to say? Nayther of us drameth of doing you the wrong to take away Mary, while you be wanting of her. You ought to have knowed us better, Squire. And as for poor Mary, I ain't said a word to back up her hopes of a-having me yet. Now, Miss Mary, have I?" "No, that you never haven't, Master Cripps! And it may come too late; if it ever do come." "Well, well," continued Mr. Cripps, without much terror at the way she turned her back; "railly, your Worship, it was you who throwed us out. Reckoning of my times is a hard thing for me; and a hundred and four times a year is too much for the discretion of a horse a'most."