' So, if you please, Sir
Charles, will you be so good as to tell me out of your own mouth, and
then I shall know: be you crazy or hain't you--ay or no?"
Suaby and Rolfe had much ado not to laugh right out; but Sir Charles
said, gravely, he was not crazy. "Do I look crazy, Moss?"
"That ye doan't; you look twice the man you did. Why, your cheeks did
use to be so pasty like; now you've got a color--but mayhap" (casting
an eye on the decanters) "ye're flustered a bit wi' drink."
"No, no," said Rolfe, "we have not commenced our nightly debauch yet;
only just done dinner."
"Then there goes another. This will be good news to home. Dall'd if I
would not ha' come them there thirty miles on all-fours for't. But,
sir, if so be you are not crazy, please think about coming home, for
things ain't as they should be in our parts. My lady she is away for
her groaning, and partly for fear of this very Richard Bassett; and him
and his lawyer they have put it about as you are dead in law; that is
the word: and so the servants they don't know what to think; and the
village folk are skeared with his clapping four brace on 'em in jail:
and Joe and I, we wants to fight un, but my dame she is timorous, and
won't let us, because of the laayer. And th' upshot is, this here
Richard Bassett is master after a manner, and comes on the very lawn,
and brings men with a pole measure, and uses the place as his'n mostly;
but our Joe bides in the Hall with his gun, and swears he'll shoot him
if he sets foot in the house.
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