Page 398 - lady-chatterlys-lover

they wouldn’t want to listen to a lot of clatfart about another
man’s.’
He said it with some bitterness, and no doubt it contains
the real germ of truth. The mode of putting it, however, is
neither delicate nor respectful. I hinted as much, and then
I heard the tin can rattle again. ‘It’s not for a man the shape
you’re in, Sir Clifford, to twit me for havin’ a cod atween
my legs.’
These things, said indiscriminately to all and sundry, of
course do not help him at all, and the rector, and Finley,
and Burroughs all think it would be as well if the man left
the place.
I asked him fit was true that he entertained ladies down
at the cottage, and all he said was: ‘Why, what’s that to you,
Sir Clifford?’ I told him I intended to have decency ob-
served on my estate, to which he replied: ‘Then you mun
button the mouths o’ a’ th’ women.’—When I pressed him
about his manner of life at the cottage, he said: ‘Surely you
might ma’e a scandal out o’ me an’ my bitch Flossie. You’ve
missed summat there.’ As a matter of fact, for an example of
impertinence he’d be hard to beat.
I asked him fit would be easy for him to find another
job. He said: ‘If you’re hintin’ that you’d like to shunt me
out of this job, it’d be easy as wink.’ So he made no trouble
at all about leaving at the end of next week, and apparently
is willing to initiate a young fellow, Joe Chambers, into as
many mysteries of the craft as possible. I told him I would
give him a month’s wages extra, when he left. He said he’d
rather I kept my money, as I’d no occasion to ease my con-