‘Ha-ha-ha!’ said Dan, striking at a stone in the road with the stout green hazel he carried.  ’A wink is as good as a nod:  thank’ee—­we’ll mind all that now.’

‘If we do come,’ said Sol, ’we shall not mix up with Mrs. Petherwin at all.’

‘O indeed!’

’O no. (Perhaps you think it odd that we call her “Mrs. Petherwin,” but that’s by agreement as safer and better than Berta, because we be such rough chaps you see, and she’s so lofty.) ’Twould demean her to claim kin wi’ her in London—­two journeymen like we, that know nothing besides our trades.’

‘Not at all,’ said Christopher, by way of chiming in in the friendliest manner.  ’She would be pleased to see any straightforward honest man and brother, I should think, notwithstanding that she has moved in other society for a time.’

‘Ah, you don’t know Berta!’ said Dan, looking as if he did.

‘How—­in what way do you mean?’ said Christopher uneasily.

’So lofty—­so very lofty!  Isn’t she, Sol?  Why she’ll never stir out from mother’s till after dark, and then her day begins; and she’ll traipse about under the trees, and never go into the high-road, so that nobody in the way of gentle-people shall run up against her and know her living in such a little small hut after biding in a big mansion-place.  There, we don’t find fault wi’ her about it:  we like her just the same, though she don’t speak to us in the street; for a feller must be a fool to make a piece of work about a woman’s pride, when ’tis his own sister, and hang upon her and bother her when he knows ’tis for her good that he should not.  Yes, her life has been quare enough.  I hope she enjoys it, but for my part I like plain sailing.  None of your ups and downs for me.  There, I suppose ‘twas her nater to want to look into the world a bit.’

‘Father and mother kept Berta to school, you understand, sir,’ explained the more thoughtful Sol, ’because she was such a quick child, and they always had a notion of making a governess of her.  Sums?  If you said to that child, “Berta, ’levenpence-three-farthings a day, how much a year?” she would tell ’ee in three seconds out of her own little head.  And that hard sum about the herrings she had done afore she was nine.’

‘True, she had,’ said Dan.  ’And we all know that to do that is to do something that’s no nonsense.’

‘What is the sum?’ Christopher inquired.

‘What—­not know the sum about the herrings?’ said Dan, spreading his gaze all over Christopher in amazement.

‘Never heard of it,’ said Christopher.

’Why down in these parts just as you try a man’s soul by the Ten Commandments, you try his head by that there sum—­hey, Sol?’

‘Ay, that we do.’