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"Brother Jarrum thinks as the head saint, the prophet hisself, has a favour to me! Wives is as happy there as the day's long." Peckaby grinned; the reply amused him much. "You poor ignorant creatur," cried he, "you have got your head up in a mad-house; and that's about it. You know Mary Green?" "Well?" answered she, looking surprised at this divertissement.
Peckaby made a pretence of attending to customers; but she did not get two in a week. And if those two entered, they could not be served, for she was pretty sure to be out, gossiping. This state of things did not please Mrs. Peckaby. In one point of view the failing of the trade pleased her, because it left her less work to do; but she did not like the failing of their income.
The white donkey was gone, the conducting brothers were gone, and she was alone in the middle of a wood, two miles from home, on a wet night. Mrs. Peckaby had heard of enchantments, and began to think she must have been subjected to something of the sort. She rubbed her eyes; she pinched her arms. Was she in her senses or not? Sure never was such a situation heard of!
Bread, flour, meat, potatoes, butter, tea, sugar, red herrings, and the like. Soap and candles were also sold; and afterwards the man added green vegetables and coals, the latter doled out by the measure, so much a "kipe." The man's name was Peckaby; he and his wife were without family, and they managed the shop between them.
'Perhaps she wouldn't mind having her aprons off the dark, says Susan Peckaby; 'it don't matter what colour aprons is of they're not like gownds. And then we agreed that I should send Dan up here at once to ask her, and Susan Peckaby who seemed mighty eager to have the print said she'd wait till he come back.
You just try a husband, Bess Dawson; whether he's a saint, or whether he's a sinner, let him be of a cranky temper, thwarting you at every trick and turn, and you'll see what sort of a paradise marriage is! Don't you think I'm right, sir?" Jan's mouth was extended from ear to ear, laughing. "I never tried it," said he. "Were you to have been espoused by Brother Jarrum?" he asked, of Susan Peckaby.
One day you saw me just a-kissing of a girl in that there corner leastways you fancied as you saw me," corrected Peckaby, coughing down his slip. "Well, d'ye recollect the scrimmage? Didn't you go a'most mad, never keeping' your tongue quiet for a week, and the place hardly holding of ye? How 'ud you like to have eight or ten more of 'em, my married wives, like you be, brought in here?"
I was a-buying some silk, sir, in at Mother Duff's shop, and Susan Peckaby was in there too, she was, a-talking rubbish about her white donkey, when Dan flounders in upon us in a state not to be told, a-frightening of us dreadful, and a-smashing in the winder with his arm. And he said he'd seen a dead man." Jan could not make sense of the tale.
They be gone and have left me! oh, o-o-o-h!" "And husbands, besides; one for everybody!" spoke up a girl. "You forget that, Mrs. Peckaby." "Husbands besides," acquiesced Susan Peckaby, aroused from her moaning. "Every woman's sure to be chose by a saint as soon as she gets out. There's not such a thing as a old maid there, and there needn't be no widders." Mrs.
"I believe there has been some unfortinate mistake, and that when he finds I'm not among the company, he'll come back for me. I'd go after them, only that Peckaby's on the watch. I never see such a altered man as Peckaby; it had used to be as I could just turn him round my little finger, but he won't be turned now." She finished up with a storm of sobs.
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