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Updated: June 28, 2025
He seemed to guess what was in the air, and hurriedly tried to pass on, but Andrew stepped out with the usual question. "No," he replied uneasily, "I'll ha'e no part in ony mair strife. Folk just get into bother for nothing. Men'll ha'e to keep mind that gaffers now-a-days'll no' put up wi' disobedience."
Male gossips love scandal as dearly as female gossips do, and they bring to it the stronger relish and energies of their sex. But these were country gaffers, whose speech like shadows grows lengthy in the leisurely hours of eventide. The gentle reader shall have the tale in plain narration.
I called on all the 'gaffers' in that business, but none of them would employ me. Those who knew me would have nothing to do with me; those who didn't wanted a character, which of course I could not give. Well, I went two days without tasting a bit of food; but on the third I ate some turnips.
The old gammers and gaffers of the village were sitting by their firesides, for, in spite of the sunshine, the air was cold, and more than once Verity shivered as she sat. "This wind is too cold for you, my child," he said presently; "let us walk on." But she shook her head. "No, please let us stay a little longer. I do so love this village. If I were an artist I would paint it.
"Does any one here know the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, close by the park of the Chateau d'Ourde?" asked Chauvelin, vaguely addressing the knot of gaffers that stood closest to him. The men shook their heads. Some had dimly heard of the Chateau d'Ourde; it was some way in the interior of the forest of Boulogne, but no one knew about a chapel; people did not trouble about chapels nowadays.
Cobb and long Phil Parkes and Solomon Daisy, "who would pass two mortal hours and a half without any of them speaking a single word, and who were firmly convinced that they were very jovial companions;" but they were as reticent and stolid and good natured as such simple country gaffers are wont to be. I remember in particular one Saturday afternoon in late October.
Craw! Craw! Craw! The crows flapped slowly home, and the Gaffers moved off too. The sun was down, and "damps" are bad for "rheumatics." "It's a strange tale," said Gaffer II., "but if all's true ye tell me, there's not too many like him." "That's right enough," Gaffer I. admitted. "He's been t' same all through, and ye should ha' seen the burying he gave t' old chap.
On days and nights in the old-fashioned winters, when the sledding of big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had made the course down the hill one glare of adamantine snow between deep rifts, the population of the village used to turn out; not the big and little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even to the venerable gaffers of those days who could remember how they used to coast there before the Civil War was thought of, when the Cherry Tavern still fed scores of pleasure-seeking Bostonians on big, luscious black-heart cherries each June, and in winter the Ponkapoag Inn had its patrons from the big city not only for coasting but for pickerel fishing on the pond.
Of course, everyone knew of Béla's aversion to the csárdás, and curiosity prompted gaffers and gossips to try and hear what would be the end of this argument between the pretty bride who certainly looked rather wilful and obstinate now and her future lord and master.
The gaffers scrambled for places, wedged in a compact circle, the spectators standing behind them to advise or take a hand as occasion offered. Chook looked at the kip, a flat piece of wood, the size of a butter-pat, and the two pennies, blackened on the tail and polished on the face. A gaffer stepped into the ring and picked them up. "A dollar 'eads! A dollar tails!
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