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Updated: May 22, 2025
My ancestor's artifice was very successful when the race was run on two sides of a hedge, backwards and forwards; but if a louis d'or and a bottle of brandy had depended on my reaching the tinker-mother before the clergywoman, I should have lost the wager. We hurried after her, however, as fast as we were able, keeping well under the brushwood.
Sybil was leaning back against a tree opposite; she wore a hat and shawl, and looked almost as wild as the tinker-mother had looked the day before. She seemed to have been at the inn with the clergywoman, and was telling the tinker-mother the result. "You told her he had got two years, my daughter? Does she say she will get him out?"
The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman's face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick.
In old days, when my excellent partner and I used to take our evening stroll up the field, we were wont to regard it quite as a grievance if a cousin, who lived at the far end of the hedge, came out and caught us and detained us for a gossip. But now I could hardly settle to my midday nap for thinking of the tinker-mother; and as to Mrs.
"If you care for Christian, leave him the only strength that is strong enough to hold us back from sin, and to do instead of joy." The tinker-mother lifted her head; but before she could say a word, the young gentleman burst into indignant speech. "Gertrude, I can bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back.
The last glimpse I had of her was when she turned once more, and put the hair from her face to look at the old woman: but the tinker-mother did not see her, for she was muttering with her head upon her hands. It was a remarkable summer that summer when I had seven, and when we took so much interest in our neighbours. I make a point of never disturbing myself about the events of by-gone seasons.
The clergywoman had been standing very still, with her two white hands folded before her, and her eyes, that had dark circles round them which made them look large, fixed upon the tinker-mother, as she muttered; but when she ceased muttering the clergywoman unlocked her hands, and with one movement took off her hat.
It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old gipsy hag." Whilst he was speaking the tinker-mother had risen to her feet, and when she stood quite upright she was much taller than I had thought.
When we could see our neighbours again, the tinker-mother was standing up, and speaking hurriedly, with a wild look in her eyes. "Let me be, Sybil Stanley, and let me speak. I says again, what has fine folk to do with coming and worriting us in our wood? If I did sell him, I sold him fair and if I got him back, I bought him back fair. Aye my delicate gentlewoman, you may look at me, but I did!
It was not many days after that on which we heard the old tinker-mother relate Christian's history, that we were stopped on our way to the corner where we usually concealed ourselves, by hearing strange voices from the winding pathway above us. "It's a young man," said I. "It's Christian!" cried Mrs. Hedgehog.
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