Betty’s temper had been made none the better by the persecutions of a suitor, none other than Sam James, the Gotham carrier, who came that way to Castleborough every few days. This fellow was a close, miserly churl, who rented a little farm, and lived by himself. He thought Betty must have saved a good solid sum of money, and so began to be very gracious to her. But Betty gave him notice to take himself off without more ado. Sam James came stealing slyly to the kitchen window evening after evening, and tapping gently when Betty was near it, to induce her to go out and speak to him. At first she was rather startled; but peering out into the dark, and catching a gleam of his face near the pane, she said, out before all the men, one night, “There’s that hugger-mugger fellow, Sam James, i’ th’ garden. Does he think I’ll go out to a chap that has na the pluck to come in and show his sen like a man? Run out, Tom,” to a young lad of seventeen, “and see how he’ll take to his heels!” Tom was only too ready to enjoy the lark; out he ran, and away sprang James, leaped the garden-wall next the lane, and came down on the back of a cow, quietly chewing her cud under it. Up started the poor beast, in a great fright and with a great bellow, and James went tumbling down the slope to the road. Great and continued was the laughter of the servants in the kitchen at this adventure, and Betty laughed as heartily as the rest. “But,” said one of the men, “Sam James is rich, Betty; you might make a worse match.” “Match!” said Betty, “with a passionate fool like that! Why, th’ other day he was gathering sticks in his close, where he had been trimming th’ hedges, and instead of putting them into his cart, he tried to stuff them into a sack-bag, and as one end sprung out as he forced another in, what did the demented norp but seize a hedge-stake and thresh th’ bag wi’ it like a madman, as he is.” “But,” said the man again, “see what a pair of good horses he has!” “Ay, and when he was in a passion wi’ one on ’em one day, he up with his billhook and gave th’ poor dumb creetur a chop! A brute! I’ll set the dogs on him if he comes sneaking here again.” Betty was delighted with putting James to flight; and the story of his tumbling over Tim Bunting’s cow, which often grazed in the lanes, was soon through the whole village, from that centre of intelligence—the Grey Goose; so that Sam James found it convenient to avoid the chaffing he got at Woodburn, and the kind inquiries of the women whether he got no hurt when he fell over the Grange garden-wall, by sending a substitute that way for a long time with his cart.