"Us don't want to hear her name no more," declared his mother--"not on your lips, that is. 'Tis Mary now, and she's a proper girl too. Where she got her wits from I never can make out. 'Twasn't from her mother, for the poor soul was only moon to schoolmaster's sun, and hadn't more sense than, please God, she should have. That gert, hulking chap, William, as paints his silly little pictures, be so like his mother in character as two peas, though he carries his father's body." "Mary hasn't got no higher opinion of 'em than you have," declared Jarratt. "She can suffer her father, but not the 'Infant.' She'm twice the man he is." "For my part, I'd sooner do with him than schoolmaster," answered Hephzibah. "Lord save us--such an empty drum never was. Why, to hear his great, important voice, you'd think he'd met a lion in the path. Moses--when he comed down from the Mount--couldn't have felt more full of news. And what do it all come to? Nothing at all--save that he's just drunk a dish of tea round the corner with some other old fool; or that one of the school-childer's got the mumps; or some such twaddle." "Not that us should seek to set Mary against her own father, however," said Philip mildly. "Be quiet, you mouse of a man!" answered his wife. "Who wants to set children against parents, I should like to know? If a child be set against parents, 'tis the silly parents' own fault--as you ought to understand--nobody better." The family met again that night, and Susan, coming across from Mr. Woodrow's for some butter, brought the expected news with her. "Mr. Gregory Friend was took off about midday," she said. "I met young Billy Luke--him as he apprenticed to Mr. Medland, the undertaker. He knowed all about it. They be building his coffin this minute, and 'twill be taken up to-morrow morning; and 'tis ordained that poor Mr. Friend shall be drove on the trolley that he used to work up and down the line with his peat." "Quite right," said Mr. Weekes. "For that matter, there's no other way they could fetch him down. Well, well--who'd have thought of him going?" "They've allowed Mr. Brendon to have the corpse took to the vicarage; and the funeral party will walk from there; and he's to be buried Friday; and two wreaths have come in already, if you'll believe it," continued Susan. "One from them people at High Down, that Mr. Friend did use to keep in firing free of cost; and one from somebody unknown." "Us will do the same," declared Philip. "There should be some Michaelmas daisies near out, but I haven't looked at the front garden for a fortnight."