in many aggravating ways."
"Ah, poor woman!" said granny. "The state she finds herself in--neither maid, wife, nor widow, as you may say--is not the primest form of life for keeping in good spirits. How long is it since she has heard from Sir Blount, Tabitha?"
"Two years and more," said the young woman. "He went into one side of Africa, as it might be, three St. Martin's days back. I can mind it, because 'twas my birthday. And he meant to come out the other side. But he didn't. He has never come out at all."
"For all the world like losing a rat in a barley-mow," said Hezekiah. "He's lost, though you know where he is." His comrades nodded.
"Ay, my lady is a walking weariness. I seed her yawn just at the very moment when the fox was halloaed away by Lornton Copse, and the hounds runned en all but past her carriage wheels. If I were she I'd see a little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor feast to speak of, till Easter week,--that's true."
"She dares not. She's under solemn oath to do no such thing."
"Be cust if I would keep any such oath! But here's the pa'son, if my ears don't deceive me."
There was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the door-scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the door on its hinges, and a voice which Swithin recognized as Mr. Torkingham's. He greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled.
"Ay, sir," said Haymoss Fry. "'Tis only my jints that have kept me from assembling myself long ago. I'd assemble upon the top of Welland Steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints. I assure ye, Pa'son Tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to come through when I was cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez gnawing, every now and then. When a feller's young he's too small in the brain to see how soon a constitution can be squandered, worse luck!"
"True," said Biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in finding the Psalms. "A man's a fool till he's forty. Often have I thought, when hay-pitching, and the small of my back seeming no stouter than a harnet's, 'The devil send that I had but the making of labouring men for a twelvemonth!' I'd gie every man jack two good backbones, even if the alteration was as wrong as forgery."
"Four,--four backbones," said Haymoss, decisively.
"Yes, four," threw in Sammy Blore, with additional weight of experience. "For you want one in front for breast-ploughing and such like, one at the right side for ground-dressing, and one at the left side for turning mixens."
"Well; then next I'd move every man's wyndpipe a good span away from his glutchpipe, so that at harvest time he could fetch breath in 's drinking, without being choked and 

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