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Jacob got very uneasy. The tears came into his eyes. He did not speak for several minutes. At last he said, with much emotion, "'Deed, sir, and you're very kind; but there's none as I care to write to gradely. There's them as should be all the world to me, but they're nothing to me now. I can't tell you just what it is; but it's even as I'm saying to you.
"I wonder at ye, Davie!" she said, surrendering. After that Maggie must needs give in; and it was well understood, though nothing definite had been said, that the boy and girl were courting. And in the Dale the unanimous opinion was that the young couple would make "a gradely pair, surely." M'Adam was the last person to hear the news, long after it had been common knowledge in the village.
Lizzie was silent for a moment, and then asked: "Is shoo a taicher, an' has shoo gotten fantickles and red hair?" "No," I replied, and I thought with some amusement of the freckled face and aureoled head of the village schoolmistress, who had got across with Lizzie on account of her inability to do sums and speak "gradely English." "She's an old lady, with white hair; she's my mother."
Ay, there were some who knew this, and could say, "If you want gradely fun that leaves no afterthought, you must go to Ned's for it." Of course Ned had won the respect even of those who abused him most, and of none more truly than Thomas Johnson.
They've never done us no harm, and we've nothing gradely to say against 'em; and you know it too. They've toiled hard for their brass, and they haven't made it away as we have done; and if they're well off, it's no more nor they deserve." "Not made away their brass! No, indeed!" said his wife, contemptuously, "no danger of that; they'll fist it close enough. They like it too well to part with it.
You say you love the Lord; well, he will not leave you comfortless." "It's the drink, the cursed drink, as done it," said the other, half to himself. "Well, my lad; and if you have been led astray, and are gradely sorry for it, there's room in the Lord's heart for you still." "Nay, it isn't that. I'm a total abstainer to the back-bone, and have been for years."
"Nay, daddy, na-ay!" she said in a clear drawl, imitating Dick's. "Always feared, Ah be, o' talkin', when there's a many men makin' simple jests. That were a gradely word o' yourn, 'Cloth be a fine thing, but blood's a better!" And she finished with a low, cooing chuckle. Then, loud and clear, came the parson's voice. "You can let 'em go now, Mr. Bunce," he said.
Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtaken by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. 'It wor sperrits here, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere t' warld wor gradely swarmin wi 'em, said Margaret bitterly.
'Did th' owd powse say that, lass? cried Milly's mother. 'I nobbud wish I'd yerd him. He's lived more nor thirty year baat one, an' a bonny speciment he is. Bud it's a gradely job for th' woman 'at missed him. He were welly weddin' Malachi o' th' Mount's wife once over. 'Yi; hoo'd a lucky miss, an' no mistak'. But happen hoo'd ha' snapped him. 'Never, lad.
"Ay," said his sister; "he's gotten a beard to his face, and he's taller and browner like, but his eye's the same he's our Sammul, sure enough. You'll not be for flitting again for a-while," she said, looking at him half playfully and half in earnest. "No," he replied; "I've had flitting enough for a bit. But eh, Betty, you've growed yourself into a gradely woman.
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