Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary
intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the
sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered
considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles,
and ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a
very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy
description.
Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again
outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary
presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the
regular dripping of the fog from the plantation boughs around.
The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one--the
personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods
and groves.
"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it," said
Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly higher
than her elbows. 'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to himself when he
first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your
knee-jints were greased with very saint's anointment, and tell off your
Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can
eat your victuals such a figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed
character by this time I can't say; but I don't care who the man is,
that's how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there."
"Did she do it in her husband's time?"
"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his temper.
Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by
slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water.
"That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,' he said,
'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--he'd say
anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged creature's name in
vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get these spars home-along, and
to-morrow, thank God, I must see about using 'em."
An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury's
servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard
between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for
fuel. She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible kind,
she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or upstairs; the
other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling among the
men in the spar-house or out-of-doors.
"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to see
a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that
after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn't
rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and
that's late, Grammer Oliver."