"Penny a day, and there y'are, primed! Better than a wife? Ha, ha!" "And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants," added tinker. "So ye can!" Speed-the-Plough took him up. "And ye doan't want for to. Leastways, t'other case. I means pipe." "And," continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, "it don't bring repentance after it." "Not nohow, master, it doan't! And"--Speed-the-Plough cocked his eye--"it doan't eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan't." Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher, which the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up the subject by saying the best thing that could be said, the two smoked for some time in silence to the drip and patter of the shower. Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar hedge. He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the tinker's pots, smoking, profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed to be taken up alternately by the grey puffs from their mouths. It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, "Times is bad!" His companion assented, "Sure-ly!" "But it somehow comes round right," resumed the tinker. "Why, look here. Where's the good o' moping? I sees it all come round right and tight. Now I travels about. I've got my beat. 'Casion calls me t'other day to Newcastle!--Eh?" "Coals!" ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously. "Coals!" echoed the tinker. "You ask what I goes there for, mayhap? Never you mind. One sees a mort o' life in my trade. Not for coals it isn't. And I don't carry 'em there, neither. Anyhow, I comes back. London's my mark. Says I, I'll see a bit o' the sea, and steps aboard a collier. We were as nigh wrecked as the prophet Paul." "--A--who's him?" the other wished to know. "Read your Bible," said the tinker. "We pitched and tossed--'tain't that game at sea 'tis on land, I can tell ye! I thinks, down we're a-going--say your prayers, Bob Tiles! That was a night, to be sure! But God's above the devil, and here I am, ye see." Speed-the-Plough lurched round on his elbow and regarded him indifferently. "D'ye call that doctrin'? He bean't al'ays, or I shoo'n't be scrapin' my heels wi' nothin' to do, and, what's warse, nothin' to eat. Why, look heer. Luck's luck, and bad luck's the contrary. Varmer Bollop, t'other day, has's rick burnt down. Next night his gran'ry's burnt. What do he tak' and go and do? He takes and goes and hangs unsel', and turns us out of his employ. God warn't above the devil then, I thinks, or I can't make out the reckonin'." The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.