"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,"
said Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock
hardly higher than her elbows. 'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to
himself when he first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit,
and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased with very saint's
anointment, and tell off your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business
man counting money; and yet you can eat your victuals such a
figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed character by this time I
can't say; but I don't care who the man is, that's how she went on
when my brother-in-law lived there."

"Did she do it in her husband's time?"

"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his
temper. Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical
form by slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his
eyes water. "That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down,
Creedle,' he said, 'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--
he'd say anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged
creature's name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get
these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about
using 'em."

An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury's
servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard
between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now
for fuel. She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible
kind, she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or up-
stairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was