"Yes, and got used to it; but he won't have Melinda Honeysett for nothing. A daughter like Susan gives all and expects no return; a wife like Mrs. Honeysett will want a run for her money. And Joe knows mighty well it will have to be give and take in future." "Quite right too." "There's another thing hanging over master. It won't seem much compared with you going. But I'm off before very long myself." "By gor! You going too!" "In the fall I reckon." "When he hears that, he'll throw the house out of windows!" "Not him. I'm nobody." "If it's all the same to you, I'd be glad if you didn't break this to Stockman till our job's a thought forwarder," said Thomas. "He can only stand a certain amount. You was more to him than me really. This will very like turn him against human nature in general, and if he gets desperate, he may disgrace himself." "I shan't speak just yet." "We was much hoping--Soosie and me--that he'd go bald-headed for Melinda before this--if only to hit back. Because, if he done that, he might cut my future wife out of his will you see. And, in his present spirit of mind, I believe it would comfort him a lot to do so--and tell me he had." "No, no--he wouldn't lower himself like that. And as for Mrs. Honeysett, I reckon he's to work in that quarter. He can't strike all of a sudden, of course, because the people would say he'd only done it for his own convenience; but he'll be about her before long I expect. He's been saying in a good few places that he must marry now." "He named her name at Green Hayes to my certain knowledge," said Thomas, "and Mrs. Bamsey heard him do so; and she told Arthur Chaffe, the carpenter; and he told his head man; and he told me. And he said more. He said that Arthur Chaffe had marked that Joe had lost a lot of his old bounce and weren't by no means so charming as he used to be." "There's no doubt this job has upset him a lot." "Then where's his religion? He did ought to remember he can't go sailing on and have everything his own way all his life, no more than anybody else." They hoed together shoulder to shoulder, then reached the end of their rows and turned again. "There's a religious side no doubt," admitted Maynard. "And we never feel more religious, if we're religious-minded at all, than after a stroke of good fortune; and never less so than after a stroke of bad. And I'm telling you what I know there, because I've been called to go into such things pretty close. There's nothing harder than to break away from what you was taught as a child. 'Tis amazing how a thing gets rooted into a young mind, and how difficult it may be for the man's sense to sweep it away come he grows up." Mr. Palk, however, was not concerned with such questions.