But Miss Galindo said that those labourers who knew Mr.
Horner well, told her that he was always more quick-eyed to shortcomings, more savage-like in fault-finding, on those days when the lad was absent.
Miss Galindo, indeed, was my great authority for most of the village news which I heard.

She it was who gave me the particulars of poor Harry's accident.
"You see, my dear," she said, "the little poacher has taken some unaccountable fancy to my master." (This was the name by which Miss Galindo always spoke of Mr.Horner to me, ever since she had been, as she called it, appointed his clerk.) "Now if I had twenty hearts to lose, I never could spare a bit of one of them for that good, gray, square, severe man.

But different people have different tastes, and here is that little imp of a gipsy-tinker ready to turn slave for my master; and, odd enough, my master,--who, I should have said beforehand, would have made short work of imp, and imp's family, and have sent Hall, the Bang-beggar, after them in no time--my master, as they tell me, is in his way quite fond of the lad, and if he could, without vexing my lady too much, he would have made him what the folks here call a Latiner.

However, last night, it seems that there was a letter of some importance forgotten (I can't tell you what it was about, my dear, though I know perfectly well, but '_service oblige_,' as well as 'noblesse,' and you must take my word for it that it was important, and one that I am surprised my master could forget), till too late for the post.

(The poor, good, orderly man is not what he was before his wife's death.) Well, it seems that he was sore annoyed by his forgetfulness, and well he might be.