The young man surveyed her without hazarding a remark; those strange eyes of his remained as impassive as ever, but the corners of his mouth turned slightly upwards. “I warn’t a-goin’ to let en bring his wife here,” continued the old woman. “I didn’t never fancy her, and ’twas again’ my will he did take up wi’ her. ‘You don’t bring her here,’ I says.--‘Then I don’t stop here,’ says he. ‘All right, my lad,’ says I, ‘ye can march!’ So he marched. He be a-workin’ over to new brewery now--down in the town.” Baverstock apparently considered that this communication called for no comment; at all events he made none. Mrs. Cluett, who had wrought herself up to the point of exposing the full extent of her grievances, was no whit abashed by his silence, however, and continued excitedly. “The menfolk--there! they do seem to think a poor lone ’ooman fit for nothin’ but to make a laughin’ stock on. Dear heart alive, ’tis enough to drive a body silly! Us can’t seem to find a decent civil-spoke chap nowheres, can us, Alice? The minute a thing is not to their likin’ up they comes wi’ their sauce and their impudence, and off they goes.” The young man gazed at her with an increasing interest:-- “You be short-handed now, then, be ye?” asked he. Mrs. Cluett threw back her head with an ironical laugh. “Short-handed! We be, so to speak, wi’out no hands at all. The last boy as worked here marched off o’ Saturday. Turned up his nose at his good victuals, and answered I back when I spoke my mind to him about it. I’m sure I don’t know where to look for another. And the ’taters bain’t all in yet, and there’s such a deal to do in this here place.” Adam Baverstock pushed back his chair and gazed at her for a moment reflectively. “I do ’low I mid serve your turn so well as another,” said he, in a calm and impartial tone, as of one in no way concerned in the issue. Mrs. Cluett surveyed him dubiously, but Alice surreptitiously nipped her mother’s elbow. “Do seem to be a likely chap,” she murmured. Still with the judicial air befitting one about to conclude a bargain, Mrs. Cluett put various questions to the would-be assistant, her countenance brightening perceptibly as she ascertained that he had some knowledge of the management of cows, his father having kept one during the latter years of his life, that he knew all about pigs, that he didn’t care what he turned his hand to, and that he was by no means particular in the matter of wages. “I don’t seem to know what to do next,” he explained. “I mid be lookin’ about me here, and I could fill in the time till you can light upon a man to your likin’. There’s one thing,” he added with that flicker of the lip which Alice had noted before, “I bain’t one as ’ull ever give ye impudence--I bain’t one as cares for much talk--I bain’t used to it, d’ye see. The wold man and me--there! There was weeks when we didn’t so much as give each other the time o’ day.”