“You’m too free with your views, Joseph Hannaford,” she said. “You’d best call to mind what pastor said to chapel last Sunday, ’bout the camel an’ the needle’s eye. Many be called an’ few chosen, so theer’s an end of it. The Brethren’s way be the right way an’ the strait way; an’ ban’t your business to be breaking gates into heaven for them as do wrong, an’ think wrong, an’ haven’t a spark of charity, an’ be busy about the Dowl’s work in every other cottage in this village. I know what church folks be—nobody better.”
Mr. Smallridge, himself of the established religion, retreated before this outburst.
“Hell of a female that,” he said to himself. “How the man can keep heart after all these years be a mystery. Yet she sits light upon him, seemingly.”
Then Joseph, with some groans and grumbles, went to decorate himself, that the new incumbent might smile upon him and reappoint him to the care of the vicarage garden. He shaved very carefully, washed, showed Mrs. Hannaford his finger-nails,—a matter he usually shirked,—donned his best attire, and finally started beside his wife to appear before Mr. Budd.
“’Tis a grievous choice,” he said; “an’ if the man doan’t take me on, I’ll have to go to the Hall under Smallridge—a very ill-convenient thing to think upon.”
“’Tis a matter of form, but better the Hall than any paltering with what’s right; an’ better be under Smallridge than against your conscience.”
“My conscience is very well, an’ always have been since I was a bwoy.”
“You’m a deal tu easy, however,” she answered sternly—“a deal tu easy, an’ you’ll very likely find that out when ’tis tu late. Your conscience be like proud-flesh, I reckon: don’t hurt ’e ’cause ’tis past feeling. I wish it pricked you so often as your rheumatics do. ’Twould be a sign of grace.”
“You’m like poor Parson Truman’s li’l maiden wi’ her flowers, you be,” he retorted. “Her was always dragging up the things to see how they prospered, an’ you’m always dragging up your conscience by the roots, same way, to see how ’tis faring. I let mine bide.”
“You can’t,” snapped back Mrs. Hannaford. “Conscience ban’t built to bide—no more’n a growing pear upon a tree. It goes from gude to better, or else from bad to worse. You ban’t so righteous-minded as I could wish ’e, Joseph; but I’ve done a deal for you since we’ve been man an’ wife; an’ if you’m spared ten year more, I lay I’ll have your conscience to work so hard as a man saving his own hay.”