But don't let me hear of that Club any more, or YOU
may go and cultivate for the public good."
"Your lordship knows that I goes there for nothing except to keep up my
burial. And with all the work there is upon this place, the Lord only
knows when I may be requiring of it. Ah! I never see the like; I never
did. And a blade of grass the wrong way comes down on poor old Swipes!"
Hereupon the master, having done his duty, was relieved from overdoing
it, and went on other business with a peaceful mind. The feelings,
however, of Mr. Swipes were not to be appeased so lightly, but demanded
the immediate satisfaction of a pint of beer. And so large was his
charity that if his master fell short of duty upon that point, he
accredited him with the good intention, and enabled him to discharge it.
"My dear soul," he said, with symptoms of exhaustion, to good Mrs.
Cloam, the housekeeper, who had all the keys at her girdle, about ten
o'clock on the Monday morning, "what a day we did have yesterday!"
"A mercy upon me, Mr. Swipes," cried Mrs. Cloam, who was also short of
breath, "how you did exaggerate my poor narves, a-rushing up so soft,
with the cold steel in both your hands!"
"Ah! ma'am, it have right to be a good deal wuss than that," the
chivalrous Swipes made answer, with the scythe beside his ear. "It don't
consarn what the masters say, though enough to take one's legs off. But
the ladies, Mrs. Cloam, the ladies--it's them as takes our heads off.
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