They would have been still more bitter if she could have heard the exclamations of the mothers over their gates that evening.
“Well, to be sure, that a young lady should have treated my poor like that!”
“Her father says, says he, ‘I’ll have the law of she.’”
“My Jenny, she come home looking like a poor mad woman. ‘Whatever has thee been arter?’ says I. ‘’Tis the lady,’ says she.”
“Lady! She ought to be ashamed on herself, a-making such Betties of the poor children.”
“Ah! didn’t I tell you,” gibed Tirzah, “what would come of making up to the gentlefolk, with their soft words and such. They only want to have their will of you, just like the blackamoors.”
“You’ll not find me a sending my Liz and Nan,” cried Mrs Morris, “no, not if her was to offer me a hundred goulden guineas.”
“I don’t let my gal go to be made into a guy!” was the general sentiment; and Mrs Verdon, in her bed, intensified it by warning her neighbours that the cropping their heads was “a preparation for sending them out to them foreign parts where they has slaves.”
And on Sunday, there were only ten of the female pupils at school, and poor Dora and Sophia both cried all church time. They thought their hasty measures had condemned their poor girls to be heathens and good-for-nothings for ever and ever.
Tirzah Todd laughed at them all. The Todds had gipsy connections; Todd himself was hardly ever visible. He was never chargeable to the parish, but he never did regular work except at hay and harvest times, or when he was cutting copsewood. Then old Pucklechurch’s brother, Master Pucklechurch of Downhill, who always managed the copse cutting, used to hire him, and they and another man lived in a kind of wigwam made of chips, and cut down the seven years’ growth of underwood, dividing it into pea-sticks from the tops, and splitting the thicker parts to be woven into hurdles, or made into hoops for barrels. They had a little fire, but their wives brought them their food, and little Hoglah, now quite well only with a scarred neck, delighted to toddle about among the chips, and cry out, “Pitty! pitty!” at the primroses.