"Well, you know best, Mr. Cripps, of course. Up and down the road as you be, every door give you a hinstance. His Worship is all for eddication; and no one need swaller it, unless they likes. But pretty well schooled as I have been, sir, I looks down on no one. And now, when master's sister made that sudden call upon me, I assure you, sir, and Master Cripps, and Miss Esther in the corner there, the very first thing as I longed for was more knowledge of the ways of the kingdom. More sense, I mean, of where the powers puts the things that have been called up and laid at the feet of the law-courts. They stockings was more lost to me, than gone to be washed by the gipsies.
"It never would have done for me to say that much to Mrs. Fermitage. She would have been out in a wrath at once, for she is not sweet like master; so I gave her all 'yes' instead of 'why' or 'how,' as we do to quick-tempered gentlefolk. And then I ran away to ask my mother, and she no more than laughed at me. 'You silly child,' says mother, quite as if there had never been a fool till now; 'when the law getteth hold of a thing, there be only two places for to find it in.' 'Two places, mother! What two places?' said I, without construction. 'Why, the right-hand or the left-hand pocket of a lawyer's breeches,' mother answered, just as if she had served all her time with a tailor. Now, don't laugh, Mr. Overshute; it is true, every word as I tell you."
"Ay, that her be," cried Cripps, with a smack of one hand on the other. "Your mother is a wonderful woman for truth and sense, my deary."
"Well, well," replied Mary, with a broad knowing smile, as much as to say, "You had better try her" "at her time of life her ought to be, if ever they seek to attain it. So I acted according to mother's directions, letting her always speak foremost. And between us we got Master Kale to go, on his legs, all the way to Oxford with the hope of a lift back with you, Master Cripps; but, late as you was, he were later. He carried a letter from Mrs. Fermitage, couched in the thirtieth person, to Mrs. Luke Sharp of Cross-Duck House, the very one as sent that good book back. Master's sister have felt below contempt towards her since that time, and in dignity could do no otherwise. And now she put it short and sharp, as no less could be expected--and word for word can I say of it--