A Pair of Blue Eyes

replied Mrs. Smith; and continued after the manner of certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a casual mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the occasion, “John would spend pounds a year upon the jimcrack old thing, if he might, in having it claned, when at the same time you may doctor it yourself as well. ‘The clock’s stopped again, John,’ I say to him. ‘Better have en claned,’ says he. There’s five shillings. ‘That clock grinds again,’ I say to en. ‘Better have en claned,’ ’a says again. ‘That clock strikes wrong, John,’ says I. ‘Better have en claned,’ he goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this time if I had listened to en, and I assure you we could have bought a chainey-faced beauty wi’ the good money we’ve flung away these last ten years upon this old green-faced mortal. And, Martin, you must be wet. My son is gone up to change. John is damper than I should like to be, but ’a calls it nothing. Some of Mrs. Swancourt’s servants have been here⁠—they ran in out of the rain when going for a walk⁠—and I assure you the state of their bonnets was frightful.”

“How’s the folks? We’ve been over to Castle Boterel, and what wi’ running and stopping out of the storms, my poor head is beyond everything! fizz, fizz fizz; ’tis frying o’ fish from morning to night,” said a cracked voice in the doorway at this instant.

“Lord so’s, who’s that?” said Mrs. Smith, in a private exclamation, and turning round saw William Worm, endeavouring to make himself look passing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no connection with the humour he was in. Behind him stood a woman about twice his size, with a large umbrella over her head. This was Mrs. Worm, William’s wife.

“Come in, William,” said John Smith. “We don’t kill a pig every day. And you, likewise, Mrs. Worm. I make ye welcome. Since ye left Parson Swancourt, William, I don’t see much of ’ee.”

“No, for to tell the truth, since I took to the turnpike-gate line, I’ve been out but little, coming to church o’ Sundays not being my duty now, as ’twas in a parson’s family, you see. However, our boy is able to mind the gate now, and I said, says I, ‘Barbara, let’s call and see John Smith.’ ”

“I am sorry to hear yer pore head is so bad still.”

“Ay, I assure you that frying o’ fish is going on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes ’tisn’t only fish, but rashers o’ bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life; can’t I, Barbara?”

Mrs. Worm, who had been all this time engaged in closing her umbrella, corroborated this statement, and now, coming indoors, showed herself to be a wide-faced, comfortable-looking woman, with a wart upon her cheek, bearing a small tuft of hair in its centre.

“Have ye ever tried anything to cure yer noise, Maister Worm?” inquired Martin Cannister.

“Oh ay; bless ye, I’ve tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful man, and I have hoped He’d have found it out by this time, living so many years in a parson’s family, too, as I have, but ’a don’t seem to relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life’s a mint o’ trouble!”

“True, mournful true, William Worm. ’Tis so. The world wants looking to, or ’tis all sixes and sevens wi’ us.”

“Take your things off, Mrs. Worm,” said Mrs. Smith. “We be rather in a muddle, to tell the truth, for my son is just dropped in from Indy a day sooner than we expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently to cut up.”

Mrs. Barbara Worm, not wishing to take any mean advantage of persons in a muddle by observing them, removed her bonnet and mantle with eyes fixed upon the flowers in the plot outside the door.

“What beautiful tiger-lilies!” said Mrs. Worm.

“Yes, they be very well, but such a trouble to me on account of the children that come here. They will go eating the berries on the stem, and call ’em currants. Taste wi’ junivals is quite fancy, really.”

“And your snapdragons look as fierce as ever.”

“Well, really,” answered Mrs. Smith, entering didactically into the subject, “they are more like Christians than flowers. But they make up well enough wi’ the rest, and don’t require much tending. And the same can be said o’ these miller’s wheels. ’Tis a flower I like very much, though so simple. John says he never cares about the flowers o’ ’em, but men have no eye for anything neat. He says his favourite flower is a cauliflower. And I assure you I tremble in the springtime, for ’tis perfect murder.”

“You don’t say so, Mrs. Smith!”

“John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade, through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn’t got a good show above ground, turning ’em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems crooked round. He had turned ’em over in the spring, and the cunning creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to be.”

“What’s that long-favoured flower under the hedge?”

“They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob’s ladders! Instead of praising ’em, I be mad wi’ ’em for being so ready to bide where they are not wanted. They be very well in their way, but I do not care for things that neglect won’t kill. Do what I will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get too many of ’em. I chop the roots: up they’ll come, treble strong. Throw ’em over hedge; there they’ll grow, staring me in the face like a hungry dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same as before. ’Tis