"What! Why everything. What hinders me leavin' the whole pass'l o' items, farm and Ship to her? She'll marry a stiff man as'll look after the farm, and she'll mind the public-house every mite as well as ever have you, old woman. That's a gal as knows chalk from cheese." Mrs. Verstage leaned back with a gasp of dismay and a cramp at her heart. She dropped her hands on her lap. "You ain't speaking serious, Simon?" "I might do wuss," said he; "and the wust I could do 'ad be to give everythin' to that wastrel, Iver, who don't know the vally of a good farm and of a well-established public-house. I don't want nobody after I'm dead and gone to see rack and ruin where all were plenty and good order both on land and in house, and that's what things would come to wi' Iver here." "Simon, he is a man now. He was a boy, and what he did as a boy he won't do as a man." "He's a dauber of paints still." The taverner stood up. "I'll go and cast an eye over the hay-field," he said. "It makes me all of a rage like to think o' that boy." He threw away the broken pipe and walked off. Mrs. Verstage's brain spun like a teetotum; her heart turned cold. She was startled out of her musings by the voice of Mehetabel, who said, "Mother, it is so hot in the kitchen that I have come out to cool myself. Where is father? I thought I heard him talking with you?" "He's gone to the hay-field. He won't answer Iver's letter. He's just about as hard as one o' them Hammer Ponds when frozen to the bottom, one solid lump." "No, mother, he is not hard," said Mehetabel, "but he does not like to seem to give way all at once. You write to Iver and tell him to come here; that were better than for me to write. It will not seem right for him to be invited home by me. The words from home must be penned by you just as though spoke by you. He will return. Then you will see that father will never hold out when he has his own son before his eyes." "Did you hear all that father and I was sayin'?" asked the hostess, suspiciously. "I heard him call out against Iver because he altered the signboard; but that was done a long time agone." "Nuthin' else?" "And because he would never make a farmer nor an innkeeper." "It's a dratted noosence is this here porch," muttered the hostess. "It ort to 'a been altered ages agone, but lor', heart-alive, the old man be that stubborn and agin' all change. And you heard no more?" "I was busy, mother, and didn't give attention to what didn't concern me." "Oh!" said Mrs. Verstage, "only listened, did you, to what did concern you?" A fear had come over the hostess lest the girl had caught Simon's words relative to his notion, rather than intention, of bequeathing what he had away from Iver and to the child that had been adopted.