Tillytuck had his prescriptive corner and chair in the kitchen and he was always slipping in to ask Judy to make a cup of tea for him. The fun of it, to Pat and Cuddles, was that Judy always made it, without a word of complaint. She soon discovered that Tillytuck had a sweet tooth where pies and cake were concerned and when she was in a good humor with him there was usually a triangle of one or a slice of the other waiting for him, to the amusement of the girls who affected to believe that Judy was “sweet” on Tillytuck, much to her scorn. Sometimes she would even sit down on the other side of the stove and drink a cup of tea with him. When she felt compelled to scold him he always soothed her with a compliment.

“See how I can manage the weemen,” he would whisper complacently to Pat. “Ain’t it the pity I’m not a marrying man?”

“Perhaps you may marry yet,” responded Pat with a grave face, dropping a dot of red jelly like a gleaming ruby in the pale yellow center of her lemon tarts.

“Maybe…when I make up my mind whether I want to take pity on Judy or not,” Tillytuck answered with a wink. “There’s times when I think she’d suit me. She’s fond of talking and I’m fond of listening.”

Judy ignored nonsense of this kind. She had, so she informed the girl, taken Tillytuck’s measure once and for all.

She was, however, very bitter because he never went to church. Judy thought all hired men ought to go to church. It was only respectable. If they did not go who knew but that censorious neighbors would claim it was because they were so overworked at Silver Bush during the week that they did not be having the strength to go to church on Sundays. But Tillytuck was adamantine to her arguments.

“I don’t approve of human hymns,” he said firmly. “Nothing should be sung in churches but the psalms of David…with maybe an occasional paraphrase on special occasions. Them’s my principles and I sticks to them. I always sing a psalm before I go to bed and every Sunday morning I read a chapter in my testament.”

“And on Waping Willy’s tombstone,” muttered Judy, who for some mysterious reason resented Tillytuck’s habit of going into the graveyard to read the said chapter.