'You little flyaway! you look wild enough now,' he said, and turned to Stephen. 'But she's not a wild child at all, Mr. Smith. As steady as you; and that you are steady I see from your diligence here.'
'I think Miss Swancourt very clever,' Stephen observed.
'Yes, she is; certainly, she is,' said papa, turning his voice as much as possible to the neutral tone of disinterested criticism. 'Now, Smith, I'll tell you something; but she mustn't know it for the world--not for the world, mind, for she insists upon keeping it a dead secret. Why, SHE WRITES MY SERMONS FOR ME OFTEN, and a very good job she makes of them!'
'She can do anything.'
'She can do that. The little rascal has the very trick of the trade. But, mind you, Smith, not a word about it to her, not a single word!'
'Not a word,' said Smith.
'Look there,' said Mr. Swancourt. 'What do you think of my roofing?' He pointed with his walking-stick at the chancel roof, 'Did you do that, sir?'
'Yes, I worked in shirt-sleeves all the time that was going on. I pulled down the old rafters, fixed the new ones, put on the battens, slated the roof, all with my own hands, Worm being my assistant. We worked like slaves, didn't we, Worm?'
'Ay, sure, we did; harder than some here and there--hee, hee!' said William Worm, cropping up from somewhere. 'Like slaves, 'a b'lieve--hee, hee! And weren't ye foaming mad, sir, when the nails wouldn't go straight? Mighty I! There, 'tisn't so bad to cuss and keep it in as to cuss and let it out, is it, sir?'
'Well--why?'
'Because you, sir, when ye were a-putting on the roof, only used to cuss in your mind, which is, I suppose, no harm at all.'
'I don't think you know what goes on in my mind, Worm.'
'Oh, doan't I, sir--hee, hee! Maybe I'm but a poor wambling thing, sir, and can't read much; but I can spell as well as some here and there. Doan't ye mind, sir, that blustrous night when ye asked me to hold the candle to ye in yer workshop, when you were making a new chair for the chancel?'
'Yes; what of that?'
'I stood with the candle, and you said you liked company, if 'twas only a dog or cat--maning me; and the chair wouldn't do nohow.'
'Ah, I remember.'
'No; the chair wouldn't do nohow. 'A was very well to look at; but, Lord!----'