me in a good many sovereigns and half-sovs. Now, I'd like to know, with the family in mourning, and the young lord not able to handle a gun, will there be a house full of gentlemen? It wouldn't be decent. And that means the loss of twenty pound to me—if one penny."
"Nor is that all," said the tailor, "you'll have Macduff to keep an eye on you, not my lord. There'll be no more chucking of hampers into the goods train as it passes Copley Wood, I reckon."
The keeper made no other reply than a growl, and drew back.
"There is my daughter Jane, scullery-maid at the Park," said the shoemaker, "learning to be a cook. If her ladyship shuts up the house, and leaves the place, what will become of Jane? It isn't the place I grieve for, nor the loss of learning, for places ask to be filled now, and any one will be taken as cook, if she can do no more than boil water—but it is the perquisites. My wife was uncommon fond of jellies and sweets of all sorts, and I don't suppose these are to be picked off hedges, when the house is empty."
"Here comes Farmer Labett," exclaimed the tailor. "I say, Mr. Labett, did not his lordship let off five-and-twenty per cent from his rents last fall?"
"That is no concern of yours," replied the farmer.
"But it does concern you," retorted the tailor, "for now that his lordship is dead, the property is tied up and put in the hands of trustees, and trustees can't remit rents. If they were to do so, the young lord, when he comes of age, might be down on them and make them refund out of their own pockets. So that away over the rocks, down the Cleave, went twenty-five per cent. abatement when his lordship fell, or was helped over."
"Ah!" groaned the shoemaker, "and all them jellies, and blanc-mange, and custards was chucked down along of him."
