"Me, dame!" exclaimed Dummie, with a broad gaze of astonishment.
"Ah, you! you knows as how the mother saw more of you just afore she died than she did of 'ere one of us. Noar, now, noar, now! Tell us all about 'un. Did she steal 'un, think ye?"
"Lauk, Mother Margery, dost think I knows? Vot put such a crotchet in your 'ead?"
"Well!" said the dame, with a disappointed sigh, "I always thought as how you were more knowing about it than you owns. Dear, dear, I shall never forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,—you knows she had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the urchin; and when she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that I had not the heart to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it stretched out its wee little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it, and throwed it into my lap."
"Ah! she was a hawful voman, that 'ere!" said Dummie, shaking his head. "But howsomever, the hurchin fell into good 'ands; for I be's sure you 'as been a better mother to 'un than the raal 'un!"
"I was always a fool about childer," rejoined Mrs. Lobkins; "and I thinks as how little Paul was sent to be a comfort to my latter end! Fill the glass, Dummie."
"I 'as heard as 'ow Judith was once blowen to a great lord!" said Dummie.
"Like enough!" returned Mrs. Lobkins,—"like enough! She was always a favourite of mine, for she had a spuret [spirit] as big as my own; and she paid her rint like a decent body, for all she was out of her sinses, or 'nation like it."
"Ay, I knows as how you liked her,—'cause vy? 'T is not your vay to let a room to a voman! You says as how 't is not respectable, and you only likes men to wisit the Mug!"
"And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!" answered the dame,—"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what does it sinnify whose hand it was in afore?"