Page:Eliot - Adam Bede, vol. I, 1859.djvu/124

112 Martin Poyser at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me, and just said, 'He's in the house, I believe; I'll go and call him,' I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St Catherine in a quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among our common people."

"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs Irwine. "Make her come here on some pretext or other."

"I don't know how I can manage that, mother; it will hardly do for me to patronise a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be patronised by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You should have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's denunciation of his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm,—that is to say, to your grandfather,—to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to persuade Chad Cranage and