Mr. Netlips smiled condescendingly, and nodded as one who should say—­’You do well, my poor fellow, to be humble in my presence!’—­ and buried his nose in his tankard of ale.

“Mebbe Cohesion’s got hold o’ my red cow”—­said the burly farmer who had spoken before—­“For she’s as ailin’ as ever she was, an’ if I lose her, I loses a bit o’ my livin.’  An’ that’s what I sez an’ ‘olds by, no church-goin’ seems to ‘elp us in a bit o’ trouble, an’ it ain’t decent or Christian like, so it ’pears, to pray to the Almighty for the savin’ of a cow.  I asked Passon Walden if ’twould be right, for the cow’s as valuable to me as ever my wife was when she was alive, if not more, an’ he sez quite pleasant-like—­’Well no, Mister Thorpe, I think it best not to make any sort of special prayer for the poor beast, but just do all you can for it, and leave the rest to Providence.  A cow is worldly goods, you see—­and we’re not quite justified in praying to be allowed to keep our worldly goods.’  ‘Ain’t we!’ I sez—­’Is that a fact?  He smiled and said it was.  So I thanked him and comed away.  But I’ve been thinkin’ it over since, an’ I sez to myself—­ef we ain’t to pray for keepin’ an’ ‘avin’ our worldly goods, wot ’ave we got to pray for?”

“Oh Mr. Thorpe!” ejaculated Mrs. Buggins, almost tearfully—­“It is not this world but the next, that we must think of!  We must pray for our souls!”

“Well, marm, I ain’t got a ‘soul’ wot I knows on—­an’ as for the next world, if there ain’t no cattle farmin’ there, I reckon I’ll be out o’ work.  Do you count on keepin’ a bar in the ’eavenly country?”

A loud guffaw went the round of the room, and Mrs. Buggins gasped with horror.

“Oh, Roger!” she murmured, addressing her portly spouse, who at once took up the argument.

“You goes too fur—­you goes too fur, Mister Thorpe!” he said severely—­“There ain’t no keepin’ bars nor farmin’ carried on in the next world, nor marrying nor givin’ in marriage.  We be all as the angels there.”

“A nice angel you’ll make too, Mr. Buggins!” said Farmer Thorpe, as he sent his tankard to be refilled,—­“Lord!  We won’t know you!”

Again the laugh went round, and Mrs. Buggins precipitately retired to her ‘inner parlour’ there to recover from the shock occasioned to her religious feelings by the irreverent remarks of her too matter-of-fact customer.  Meanwhile Dan Ridley, the tailor, had again reverted to the subject of Miss Vancourt.

“There’s one thing about her comin’ to church,”—­he said; “If so be as she did come it ’ud do us all good, for she’s real pleasant to look at.  I’ve seen her a many times in the village.”

“Ah, so have I!” chorussed two or three more men.

“She’s been in to see Adam Frost’s children an’ she gave Baby Hippolyta a bag o’ sweeties,”—­said Bainton.  “An’ she’s called at the schoolhouse, but Miss Eden, she worn’t in an’ Susie Prescott saw her, an’ Susie was that struck that she ’adn’t a wurrd to say, so she tells us, an’ Miss Vancourt she went to old Josey Letherbarrow’s straight away an’ there she stayed iver so long.  She ain’t called at our house yet.”