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Updated: June 22, 2025
He was a little uncertain as to which was the wisest course to adopt, and while he was yet thinking about it he passed the cottage of old Josey Letherbarrow, and saw the old man sitting at his door peacefully smoking, while at his feet, Ipsie Frost was curled up comfortably like a kitten, busying herself in tying garlands of ivy and honeysuckle round the tops of his big coarsely-laced boots.
Frost, who, holding her blue-eyed 'Baby Hippolyta, otherwise Ipsie, by the hand, stood near the church porch "Ain't it singin' sweet?" "Fine!" murmured one or two of her gossips near her, "Seems a good sign o' smilin' weather!"
And they all turned their eyes on a flying bundle of curls, rosy cheeks, fat legs and clean pinafore, that came speeding towards old Josey, with another young feminine creature scampering after it crying: "Ipsie! Hip-po-ly-ta! Baby! Come back to your dinner!"
"She ain't finished her dinner!" breathlessly proclaimed a long- legged girl of about ten, who had run after the child, being one of her numerous sisters; "Mother said she was to come back straight." "I s'ant go back!" declared Ipsie defiantly; "Zozey and me's sweetheartin'!" Old Josey chuckled. "That's so! So we be!" he said tranquilly; "Come along little lass! Come along!"
HAS 'oo seen 'er?" she asked Walden again, taking hold of one end of his moustache very tenderly. He patted the little chubby arm. "I saw her the other night," he said, a sudden rush of words coming to his lips in answer to the child's query "Yes, Ipsie, I saw her!
"Miss Vancourt ain't been to church once till now," said Adam, "An' she's only comin' now to show it to her friends. I doesn't want to think 'ard of her, for she's a sweet-looking little lady an' a kind one an' my Ipsie just worships 'er, an' what my baby likes I'm bound to like too but I do 'ope she ain't a 'eathen, an' that once comin' to church means comin' again, an' reg'lar ever arterwards.
Ipsie Frost, who of course was present, no village revel being considered complete without her, was dancing recklessly all by herself on the grass, chirping in her baby voice a ballad of her own contriving which ran thus: "Daisies white, violets blue, Cowslips yellow, and I loves 'oo! Little bird's nest Up in a tree, Spring's comin', and 'Oo loves me!"
I'll see ye Sunday if I ain't gone to glory!" Walden pulled open the garden gate to shake hands with the old man, and to kiss Ipsie who, as he lifted her up in his arms, caressed his cheeks with her two dumpy hands. "Has 'oo seen my lady-love?" she asked, in a crooning whisper "My bootiful white lady-love?" Walden looked at Josey perplexedly.
"That will be delightful!" said Alicia Stanways, a bright little woman, whose introduction and supervision of a 'model dairy' on the Abbot's Manor estate was the pride of her life "It really makes all the people happy to see you! Little Ipsie Frost was actually crying for you the other day." "Was she? Poor little soul! The idea of a child crying for me! It's quite a novel experience!"
For he guessed Walden's secret, and was deeply touched by the quiet patience and restrained sorrow of the apparently calm, self-contained man who, notwithstanding his own inward acute agony, never forgot a single detail having to do with the poor or sick of the parish, who soothed little Ipsie Frost's bewildered grief concerning her 'poor bootiful white lady-love, and who sat with old Josey Letherbarrow by his cottage fire, trying as best he could to explain, ay, even to excuse the mysterious ways of divine Providence as apparently shown in the visitation of cruel affliction on the head of a sweet and innocent woman.
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