And she felt as sure as if she saw it that in his severity against poor Willie--for not doing things that were beneath him--her master would take Mary's folly as a joke, and fall upon her brother, who was so much older, for not going on to protect and guide her.

So she kept till after supper-time her mouthful of bad tidings.
And when the farmer heard it all, as he did before going to sleep that night, he had smoked three pipes of tobacco, and was calm; he had sipped (for once in a way) a little Hollands, and was hopeful.

And though he said nothing about it, he felt that without any order of his, or so much as the faintest desire to be told of it, neither of these petty comforts would bear to be rudely examined of its duty.

He hoped for the best, and he believed the best, and if the king was cheated, why, his loyal subject was the same, and the women were their masters.
"Have no fear, no fear," he muttered back through the closing gate of sleep; "Mary knows her business--business--" and he buzzed it off into a snore.
In the morning, however, he took a stronger and more serious view of the case, pronouncing that Mary was only a young lass, and no one could ever tell about young lasses.

And he quite fell into his wife's suggestion, that the maid could be spared till harvest-time, of which (even with the best of weather) there was little chance now for another six weeks, the season being late and backward.