‘Uncle Tom’s cat!’ interrupted Mrs. Polley, disrespectfully. ‘A good turn of honest work is a far better employment than snivelling over any made up story—though it were Mr. Holland or the old minister himself as made it up. You can tell him I said so, if you like. I wonder anybody can be so silly—not to say so unprincipled, for I call it downright want of principle, to be taken in by printed lies. Reading trash of stories and verses never paid a debt, or filled a hungry stomach, that I ever heard tell of. But I’ll tell you what they’ve done,’ speaking triumphantly in vindication of her theory, ‘they’ve brought an idiot like Poet Dymott,’ alluding to a local poet of humble vocation, ‘as low as the union. Luckily his silly of a wife who encouraged him died early, and they had no children to suffer from his not sticking to his last and shoe-leather. Fools’ tales sent a light-headed gipsy like Mrs. Dadd’s last servant into the county asylum, after she was pulled out of Buller’s Brook, where she might have stopped still for all the washing her character had got. We should be a deal better off for maids-of-all-work, when we’ve the misfortune to need ’em, if it were not for the trumpery “Family Heralds” and “People’s Journals” as the girls have the impudence to take out, throwing away their pence, and sitting up at nights by the help of prigged candle-hends, at the risk of setting houses on fire, and creeping and dawdling about their work next day. I don’t hold against a book as is an improving book, and deals with our latter hends,’ Mrs. Polley granted, showing herself a little more liberal and capable of making a concession, ‘at a proper time, on a Sunday evening, when it rains cats and dogs, so as to make chapel out of the question, and there’s nothing else to do at home. But I’d like to see any of you gals settle to a volume of sermons, if there was a glistening chimneypot hat or a draggled tail of a skirt to watch passing the door. I don’t make any stand against Polley muddling for ever amongst his newspapers, since he’s no good at any better job.’ ‘Missus Polley!’ objected the gentleman, looking up again from his newspaper, with his hat still on his head. Though he rarely stirred beyond the parlour, he wore his hat, except when he was at meals or in bed, as if to give him the help of a few inches added to his masculine height. He spoke half under his breath in subdued displeasure. ‘I don’t deny I like myself to know what’s a-going on, when I’ve time to listen, which ain’t often, and Polley’s reading out saves me the trouble of looking over the news,’ confessed the matron candidly, taking not the smallest notice of her husband’s appeal unless by speaking, if anything, in a louder key. ‘Besides, it helps to keep him out of harm’s way.’ ‘Missus Polley!’ groaned the defaulter more clamorously.