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Nothing would hire me to do it. Joey indeed!" added Liza, with a vision of the blacksmith's sanguine head rising before her, "why, you might light a candle at his poll." Mrs. Garth's banter was not calculated to outlast this kind of assault. Rising to her feet, she said: "Weel, thou'rt a rare yan, I will say. Yer ower fond o' red ribbons, laal thing.
"She'll be here soon, no doubt," said Rotha, giving Matthew his accustomed chair facing Mrs. Ray. "She's a rare brattlecan to chatter is our Liza. I telt her she was ower keen to come away with all the ins and oots aboot the constables coming to Wy'bern yesterday. She had it pat, same as if she'd seen it in prent. That were bad news, and the laal hizzy ran bull-neck to gi'e it oot."
"She's nobbut a laal bit quieter, that's all," said Matthew Branthwaite one morning when he turned in at Shoulthwaite. "The dame nivver were much of a talker not to say a talker, thoo knows; but mark me, she loves a crack all the same." Matthew acted pretty fully upon his own diagnosis of his old neighbor's seizure.
"Nay, saucer een," said Mrs. Garth with a snirt, "art tryin' to skiander me like yon saucy baggish, laal Liza?" "Come, Mrs. Garth, let us understand one another," said Rotha solemnly. "What is it you wish to tell me? You said my father had gone on a bootless errand. What do you know about it? Tell me, and don't torment me, woman." "Nay, then, I've naught to say.
His unfamiliar footstep brought from an inner room an old woman with a brown and wrinkled face, who curtsied, and, speaking in a meek voice, asked, or seemed to ask, his pleasure. "Your pardon, mistress," said Robbie, "but mayhap you've seen a little man with gray hair and a long beard going by?" "Do you say a laal man?" asked the old woman. "Ey, wrinkled and wizzent a bit?" said Robbie.
"But auld Wilson's spite on her olas did cap me a laal bit," said Matthew again. "He wanted her burnt for a witch. 'It's all stuff and bodderment aboot the witches, says I to him ya day; 'there be none. God's aboon the devil! 'Nay, nay, says Wilson, 'it'll be past jookin' when the heed's off. She'll do something for some of us yit."
The schoolmaster had walked demurely enough thus far; nor did the departure of the clergyman effect a sensible elevation of his spirits. Of all the mourners, the "laal limber Frenchman" was the most mournful. It was a cheerless winter morning when they set out from Shoulthwaite. The wind had never fallen since the terrible night of the death of Angus.
The sententious graybeard was never quite so happy, never looked quite so wise, never shook his head with such an air of good-humored consequence, never winked with such profundity of facetiousness, as when "the laal limber Frenchman" was giving a "merry touch." Wouldn't Monsey sing summat and fiddle to it too; aye, that he would, Mattha knew reet weel. "Sing!" cried the little man, "sing!
Ray's condition, "She's nobbut a laal bit quieter, and the dame nivver were much of a talker, thoo knows." Rotha Stagg remained at Shoulthwaite in accordance with her promise given to Ralph. It was well for the household that she did so.
Again some commonplace from Rotha, and another step homewards. "I've just been takin' a sup o' tea with laal 'Becca Rudd. It's early to go home, but, as I says to my Joey, there's no place like it; and nowther is there. It's like ye've found that yersel', lass, afore this." There was an insinuating sneer in the tone in which Mrs. Garth uttered her last words. Getting no response, she added,
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