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"My friend," said old Ananoff gently, "you have all my sympathy, and you shall have all my help. I will myself write to your mother, if Alexander does not return in a week. But if in a month he is not heard of, there will be no hope at all. Then you must go away, and I will shut the mouths of the gossips. Now go and rest, for you are exhausted.
No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about a hive that note and tell everything. "Oh, did you see that? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and one of the upstairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with apple- blossom honey, which she deposited, and then rushed off again like mad. Apple-blossom honey in October! Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell something! Let's after."
"It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame Magnotte told her gossips an old woman with two furiously ugly daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be found.
This popularity was unsought. It came to her because she was gracious and affectionate, of a generous nature, above petty slanders, petty gossips, petty desires.
When a few good neighbours were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbours a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip her three-legged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old woman, and then the old gossips would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour.
The wells, it may be said, are merely holes in the sand where a little turbid unwholesome water stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances.
She was bowing to some people in a brougham, and the question was never answered. After a while he went on, going back to the original subject. "I shall see Mrs. Garrison to-night and talk it over with her. Explain to her, you know, and convince her that I don't in the least care what the gossips say about me.
She was for moving Mr. Vandepeereboom to have Betje sent to the Workhouse, there to be set to Spinning, and to receive the usual unhandsome Treatment; and when he refused, having, in truth, no fault to find with the Poor Girl, Madam, in a Huff, withdrew her Countenance and Favour from me, and, with sundry of her spiteful gossips, revived the old Story of my having several Wives alive in different parts of Europe and the New World.
It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their tongues the delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner or later she must brave the displeasure of her grandmother. And the little house that was worse than anything. Her tears flowed faster as she thought of Stephen's joy in it, of his faithful labor, of the savings he had invested in it.
But she had a good rudder to steer by, called Mother-Wit. Says she, with inimitable coolness, "Mr. Gaunt is an old friend of mine, and a little too sensitive where I am concerned. Some chatterbox has been and told him Mr. Neville should say I have changed horses with him; and on that the gossips put their own construction. Mr. Gaunt hears all this, and applies insulting terms to Mr. Neville.
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