Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence."
"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of
the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine.
"Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne
is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them
out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must
move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are
must not go."
"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs.
Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little
shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age.
It's only women who have a right to live as long as that."
"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,"
said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.
Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice
to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one
of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to
convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really
too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to
imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three.
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