"I'm sure she be. I don't want none to tell me that, squoire. Tho', squoire, it's better to me nor a ten pun' note to hear you say so. I allays had a leaning to you, squoire; but I'll more nor lean to you, now. I've said all through she was good, and if e'er a man in Bungay said she warn't--; well, I was there, and ready." "I hope nobody has said so." "You can't stop them women, squoire. There ain't no dropping into them. But, Lord love 'ee, she shall come and be missus of my house to-morrow, and what 'll it matter her then what they say? But, squoire,--did ye hear if the Baro-nite had been a' hanging about that place?" "About Islington, you mean." "He goes a hanging about; he do. He don't come out straight forrard, and tell a girl as he loves her afore all the parish. There ain't one in Bungay, nor yet in Mettingham, nor yet in all the Ilketsals and all the Elmhams, as don't know as I'm set on Ruby Ruggles. Huggery-Muggery is pi'son to me, squoire." "We all know that when you've made up your mind, you have made up your mind." "I hove. It's made up ever so as to Ruby. What sort of a one is her aunt now, squoire?" "She keeps lodgings;--a very decent sort of a woman I should say." "She won't let the Baro-nite come there?" "Certainly not," said Roger, who felt that he was hardly dealing sincerely with this most sincere of mealmen. Hitherto he had shuffled off every question that had been asked him about Felix, though he knew that Ruby had spent many hours with her fashionable lover. "Mrs. Pipkin won't let him come there." "If I was to give her a ge'own now,--or a blue cloak;--them lodging-house women is mostly hard put to it;--or a chest of drawers like, for her best bedroom, wouldn't that make her more o' my side, squoire?" "I think she'll try to do her duty without that." "They do like things the like o' that; any ways I'll go up, squoire, arter Sax'nam market, and see how things is lying." "I wouldn't go just yet, Mr. Crumb, if I were you. She hasn't forgotten the scene at the farm yet." "I said nothing as warn't as kind as kind." "But her own perversity runs in her own head. If you had been unkind she could have forgiven that; but as you were good-natured and she was cross, she can't forgive that." John Crumb again scratched his head, and felt that the depths of a woman's character required more gauging than he had yet given to it. "And to tell you the truth, my friend, I think that a little hardship up at Mrs. Pipkin's will do her good." "Don't she have a bellyful o' vittels?" asked John Crumb, with intense anxiety. "I don't quite mean that. I dare say she has enough to eat. But of course she has to work for it with her aunt. She has three or four children to look after." "That moight come in handy by-and-by;--moightn't it, squoire?" said John Crumb grinning.