Runce looked at him to make sure whether he was the man who had
uttered such fearful blasphemies at the breakfast-table. "I think
we had a little discussion about this before, Mr. Runce."
"I am very glad to see you have changed your principles, Sir."
"Not a bit of it. I am too old to change my principles, Mr. Runce.
And much as I admire this country I don't think it's the place in
which I should be induced to do so." Runce looked at him again with
a scowl on his face and with a falling mouth. "Mr. Goarly is
certainly a blackguard."
"Well;--I rather think he is."
"But a blackguard may have a good cause. Put it in your own case,
Mr. Runce. If his Lordship's pheasants ate up your wheat--"
"They're welcome;--they're welcome! The more the merrier. But they
don't. Pheasants know when they're well off."
"Or if a crowd of horsemen rode over your fences, don't you
think--"
"My fences! They'd be welcome in my wife's bedroom if the fox took
that way. My fences! It's what I has fences for,--to be ridden
over."
"You didn't exactly hear what I have to say, Mr. Runce."
"And I don't want. No offence, sir, if you be a friend of my
Lord's; but if his Lordship was to say himself that Goarly was
right, I wouldn't listen to him. A good cause,--and he going about
at dead o' night with his pockets full of p'ison! Hounds and foxes
all one!--or little childer either for the matter o' that, if they
happened on the herrings!"
"I have not said his cause was good, Mr.
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