Now that’s too much

“No, no, now—that’s too much!” said the timid man, becoming a man of brazen courage all of a sudden. “I didn’t say sir. I’ll take my oath I didn’t say ‘Joseph Poorgrass o’ Weatherbury, sir.’ No, no; what’s right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very well that no man of a gentleman’s rank would be hollering there at that time o’ night. ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,’—that’s every word I said, and I shouldn’t ha’ said that if ’t hadn’t been for Keeper Day’s metheglin … There, ’twas a merciful thing it ended where it did.”

Excerpt From
Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
https://books.apple.com/us/book/far-from-the-madding-crowd/id6444773402
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