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"Likes a drop or two now and then?" Miriam was silent. "Ah! well, as I said about Joll's brother when I was a-nussing of him he was rather a bad lot it's nothing to me when people are ill what they are. Besides; there ain't so much difference 'twixt any of us." The night came. Miriam rose and went down to her brother's room.
Miriam was at once sent to bed, and it was arranged that she should take charge during the following night. Afterwards the night duty was to fall equally between them. She was so shut up in herself that she did not recognise the full value of Mrs. Joll's self-sacrifice, but she did manage to express her thanks, and ask how Mrs. Joll could leave the business.
Joll and Lizzie tubbed the children there, and then he would carry his books off to the best parlour or stroll around the farm with Mr. Joll and discuss the stock. There were no loose rails in Mr. Joll's gates, no farm implements lying out in the weather to rust. Mr.
This music kept the day merry; and beyond the window along the bright high-road there was usually something worth seeing farm-carts, jowters' carts, the doctor and his gig, pedlars and Johnny-fortnights, the miller's waggons from the valley-bottom below Joll's Farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the market-van going and returning.
"Thank 'ee, ma'am, I don't care if I do," said he; and ten minutes later they were all seated at supper and discussing the fall in wheat in the most matter-of-fact voices. Only their faces twitched now and again. "I hear you had the preacher down to Joll's last night," said Mendarva the Smith. "What'st think of en?" "I can't make him out," was Taffy's colourless but truthful answer.
There's Joll's Farm close by; Farmer Joll would board and lodge en for nine shillings a week, and glad of the chance; and he could come home for Sundays." Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached home, sat down and wrote a letter to Mendarva the Smith and another to Farmer Joll. Within a week the bargains were struck, and it was settled that Taffy should go at once.
Mendarva's forge stood on a triangle of turf beside the high-road, where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll's Farm in the valley. And Mendarva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like those you see on the statues of Nineveh. On Sundays he parted his beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon; but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest.
"I may be calling before long, to look you up," said the Bryanite, "but mind you do no more than nod when you see me." Joll's Farm lay somewhere near Carwithiel, across the moor where Taffy had gone fishing with George and Honoria.
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