'Now, as regards that word "esquire." Why, Mr.Smith, that word "esquire" is gone to the dogs,--used on the letters of every jackanapes who has a black coat.

Anything else, Worm ?' 'Ay, the folk have begun frying again!' 'Dear me! I'm sorry to hear that.' 'Yes,' Worm said groaningly to Stephen, 'I've got such a noise in my head that there's no living night nor day.

'Tis just for all the world like people frying fish: fry, fry, fry, all day long in my poor head, till I don't know whe'r I'm here or yonder.

There, God A'mighty will find it out sooner or later, I hope, and relieve me.' 'Now, my deafness,' said Mr.Swancourt impressively, 'is a dead silence; but William Worm's is that of people frying fish in his head.

Very remarkable, isn't it ?' 'I can hear the frying-pan a-fizzing as naterel as life,' said Worm corroboratively.
'Yes, it is remarkable,' said Mr.Smith.
'Very peculiar, very peculiar,' echoed the vicar; and they all then followed the path up the hill, bounded on each side by a little stone wall, from which gleamed fragments of quartz and blood-red marbles, apparently of inestimable value, in their setting of brown alluvium.
Stephen walked with the dignity of a man close to the horse's head, Worm stumbled along a stone's throw in the rear, and Elfride was nowhere in particular, yet everywhere; sometimes in front, sometimes behind, sometimes at the sides, hovering about the procession like a butterfly; not definitely engaged in travelling, yet somehow chiming in at points with the general progress.
The vicar explained things as he went on: 'The fact is, Mr.Smith, I didn't want this bother of church restoration at all, but it was necessary to do something in self-defence, on account of those d----dissenters: I use the word in its scriptural meaning, of course, not as an expletive.' 'How very odd!' said Stephen, with the concern demanded of serious friendliness.
'Odd?
That's nothing to how it is in the parish of Twinkley.