As for our Gaffer, he
has left off drinking and quarrelling, to be sure, which Your Reverence
had used to rate him for at times; but then he did look after the farm
and the cattle, and saw things went right. But now he says, let the
morrow take care for itself; so we have nothing but preaching, and
praying, and pecking at other people, and telling of experiences and
stumbling-blocks, and abusing those who don't hold all that we do; and
all this while the ricks grow less and less every year. And then when
any thing goes wrong in the house, they pop it into a sermon, not as
Your Reverence did when you preached about the ten commandments, but a
preachment of an hour about such frivolous things as set husbands
a-scolding their wives for spoiling their dinner, or not mending their
clothes; and our poor Gaffer is grown so cast down ever since Priggins
told him he thought he was a reprobate, that he says it is a crying sin
to look happy; so he keeps praying on till we have no time to practise."
Isabel inquired how the children were able to command attention to such
long services; and Dame Humphreys owned the change in this respect was
wonderful.
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