Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/368

380 "And now," said another, "Macduff will have the rule. Afore, if we didn't like what Macduff ordained, we could go direct to his lordship, but now there will be no one above Macduff but trustees, and trustees won't meddle. That will be a pretty state of things, and his wife to ride in a victoria, too."

Then a woman called Tregose pushed her way through the throng, and with loud voice expressed her views.

"I don't see what occasion you men have to grumble. Don't y' see that the family will have to go into mourning, and so get rid of their colours, and we shall get them. There's Miss Arminell's terra-cotta I've had my eye on for my Louisa, but I never reckoned on having it so soon. There never was a wind blowed," argued Mrs. Tregose, "that was an unmixed evil, and didn't blow somebody good. If this here wind have blowed fourteen horses, and jellies and twenty-five per cent. and the keeper's tips over the Cleave—it ha' blowed a terra-cotta gown on to my Louisa."

"But," argued the tailor in his strident voice, "supposing, in consequence of the death, that her ladyship and the young lady and the little lord give up living here, and go for education to London or abroad, where will you be, Mrs. Tregose, for their cast gowns? Your Louisa ain't going to wear that terra-cotta for eleven years, I reckon."

"There's something in that," assented the woman, and her mouth fell. "Yes," she said, after a pause for consideration, "who can tell how many beautiful dresses and bonnets and mantles have gone over the Cleave along with the blanc-mange, and the horses and the five-and-twenty per cent.? I'm uncommon sorry now his lordship is dead."

"I've been credibly informed," said the tailor, "that his lordship laid claim to Chillacot, and said that because old Gaffer Saltren squatted there, that did not constitute a title. Does it give a rook a title to a Scotch fir because he builds