"A nice sort o' feller you've got!" she said, with one of her grim sneers. "Spending what bit of money he's got in teain' at t' 'Coach-and-Four' every Sunday! I know what they'll charge him for your teas! Ninepence each--such extravagance! Eighteenpence every Sunday. That's three pounds eighteen shillings a year--enough to buy him a new suit o' clothes or you a new gown! And I'll lay my lord must do the grand and put a sixpence in t'plate when you go to church--just to look fine. That's another six-and-twenty shillings! You might as well tell him to chuck his brass i' t'horsepond!" "We don't have tea at the 'Coach-and-Four' every Sunday in the year!" declared Rushie. "And Herbert doesn't give sixpence at church--he keeps threepenny bits for that. And there'd be no need to have tea at all at the public if you'd behave as you ought and ask him here! But I shall be having a house of my own some day--you'll see!" "And a fine place it'll be, out o' two pounds a week!" sneered Jeckie. "Nay, I'd ha' summat better nor a feller 'at measures tape and sells pins and needles. Isn't there two or three young fellers abaht 'at has brass? I'd say naught if you'd tak' up wi' young Summers, for instance--he's been looking like a sheep at you this long while, and he's a rare good farm and money i' plenty." "Never you mind!" retorted Rushie. "Herbert hasn't got a head like a turnip nor a face like a cake with raisins in it. Make up to young Summers yourself!" Rushie, it was clear, was sentimentally and badly in love with the pomatumed Herbert. But Jeckie had no belief that it would ever come to anything serious until she awoke one morning to discover that her sister had risen much earlier and had departed to Sicaster, where by that time she had become Mrs. Binks. CHAPTER XI _Humble Pie_