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Updated: June 4, 2025
Roars of laughter accompanied his departure, and Peke looked round with a smile of triumph. "It's just like a witch-spell!" he declared. "There's nowt to do but whisper, 'Parson's fav'rite! an' Parson hisself melts away like a mist o' the mornin' or a weasel runnin' into its 'ole! Hor er, hor er, hor er!"
Matt Peke was evidently hail-fellow-well-met with many of the loafers of the district, and his desultory talk, with its quaint leaning towards a kind of rustic philosophy intermingled with an assumption of profound scientific wisdom, appeared to exercise considerable fascination over those who had the patience and inclination to listen to it.
They paid her, Peke adding a halfpenny to his threepence for the girl herself, and Helmsley, who judged it safest to imitate Peke's behaviour, doing the same. She giggled. "'Ope you aint deprivin' yourselves!" she said pertly. "No, my dear, we aint!" retorted Peke. "We can afford to treat ye like the gentlemen doos! Buy yerself a ribbin to tie up yer bonnie brown 'air!"
"Arsk no questions an' ye'll be told no lies!" commented Peke, with a chuckle. "I sees! Ye've bin a gay old chunk in yer time, mebbe! An' it's the wimin as goes in for gay old chunks as ye've made all yer larnin of. But they ain't wimin not as the country knows 'em.
An' 'e seems to want it 'orful bad, 'orful bad 'e do, on'y 'e swallers it slower an' more soft like than Matt Peke swallers." Miss Tranter ceased to stare at the fire, and stared at her domestic instead. "Prue," she said solemnly, "that old man is a gentleman!" Prue's round eyes opened a little more roundly. "Lor', Mis' Tranter!"
The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated rhythm of organ music. "We'd best 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke, then "Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome.
An' you 'ave yer got a name for the arskin'?" "Why, certainly!" And Helmsley's pale face flushed. "My name is David." "Chrisen name? Surname?" "Both." Matthew Peke shook his head. "'Twon't fadge!" he declared. "It don't sound right. "I'm not a Jew," said Helmsley, smiling. "Mebbe not mebbe not but yer name's awsome like it.
And he's put nigh every cent he's got, all Peke Latham left him, into this schooner. And she not new." "I hope Tunis has made no mistake," sighed Prudence, releasing the glass for Ira to look through once more. "There has been trouble enough over Peleg Latham's money." "More trouble than the money amounted to. Split the family wide open.
"Well, if ye never was proud in yer life, ye can be now," said Peke condescendingly, "for I tell ye plain an' true that if Matt Peke walks with a tramp on this road, every one round the Quantocks knows as how that tramp aint altogether a raskill!
But so far as 'erbs an' seeds, an' precious stalks an' flowers is savin' grace for man an' beast, Matthew Peke's got 'em all in there. An' Matthew Peke wouldn't be the man he is, if he didn't know where to find 'em better'n any livin' soul iver born!
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