“Joseph! ’tis time you put on your black,” cried a voice from the cottage door. Here grew a feeble honeysuckle that had been nailed up four years before, and still struggled gamely with a north aspect and neglect. On the other side of the doorway was a thrush in a cage. It appeared too spiritless even to mount its wooden perch, but sat on the floor of its prison and listlessly pecked at nothing. Mrs. Hannaford had a thin, flat figure, a hard mouth, keen eyes and a face like a fowl. Tremendous force of character marked her pale visage. The grey curls that hung there on each side of her narrow forehead looked like steel shavings. “Dress,” she said, “an’ be quick about it. Ah, Mr. Smallridge—helping Joseph to waste his time.” “Not me, ma’am; that’s about the only job he doesn’t want helping with. I’ve just been telling your man that if Mr. Budd to the vicarage doan’t need him, an’ he takes squire’s offer an’ comes to me, theer must be more work an’ less talk.” “The new parson will want him,” said Mrs. Hannaford, decidedly. “Who should stick a spade in that earth after twenty-five years if not Joseph?” “Very plants would cry out if anybody else was put awver them,” said Mr. Hannaford, sentimentally. “Cry out for joy, I reckon,” murmured Matthew, but not loud enough for his friend’s wife to overhear him. “Theer’s wan thing you should know,” he continued, changing the subject. “Parson Budd be a tremendous Church of Englander, so I heard squire say. He’ve got his knife into all chapel-people an’ free-thinkers an’ such like.” “’Tis a free country,” answered Mrs. Hannaford, and her curls almost appeared to clatter as she shook her head. “He’d better mind his awn business, which be faith, hope an’ charity, an’ not poke his nose into other people’s prayers!” “As for religion,” declared Joseph, “the little as I’ve got time for in that line be done along with my missis an’ the Plymouth Brethren. But theer ban’t no smallness in me. Room in the Lard’s mansions for all of us; an’ if the roads be narrer, theer’s plenty of ’em, an’ plenty of gates to the Golden Jerusalem.” Mrs. Hannaford frowned. “You’m too free with your views, Joseph Hannaford,” she said. “You’d best call to mind what pastor said to chapel last Sunday, ’bout the camel an’ the needle’s eye. Many be called an’ few chosen, so theer’s an end of it. The Brethren’s way be the right way an’ the strait way; an’ ban’t your business to be breaking gates into heaven for them as do wrong, an’ think wrong, an’ haven’t a spark of charity, an’ be busy about the Dowl’s work in every other cottage in this village. I know what church folks be—nobody better.” Mr. Smallridge, himself of the established religion, retreated before this outburst. “Hell of a female that,” he said to himself. “How the man can keep heart after all these years be a mystery. Yet she sits light upon him, seemingly.”