Mrs. Busker was strong on the family quarrel. A family quarrel was a great thing in her estimation, almost as good as a family ghost, and she gave Dick the whole history of the incident of the brook and of many others which had grown out of it, among them one concerning the death of a certain Reddy which had tragically come to pass a year or two before his birth. The said Reddy had been found one November evening stark and cold at the corner of the parson’s spinney, with an empty gun grasped in his stiffened hand, and a whole charge of small shot in his breast. Crowner’s quest had resulted in a verdict of death by misadventure, and the generally received explanation was that the young fellow’s own gun had worked the mischief by careless handling in passing through stiff undergrowth. But a certain ne’er-do-well Mountain, a noted striker and tosspot of the district, had mysteriously disappeared about that date, and had never since come within scope of Castle Barfield knowledge. Ugly rumours had got afloat, vague and formless, and soon to die out of general memory. Dick listened open-mouthed to all this, and when the narrative was concluded, held his peace for at least two minutes.
‘She isn’t wicked, is she, Aunt Jenny?’ he suddenly demanded.
‘She? Who? ‘asked Mrs. Eusker in return. ‘The little girl, Julia.’
‘Wicked? Sakes alive, whativer is the boy talking about? Wicked? O’ course not. She’s a dear good little thing as iver lived.’
‘Ichabod said that all the Mountains were wicked. But I know Joe isn’t—at least, not very. He promised me a monkey and a parrot—a green parrot, when he came back from running away. But he didn’t run away, because father found him and took him home. His father gave him an awful thrashing. He often thrashes him, Joe says. Father never thrashes me. What does his father thrash him for?’ ‘Mr. Mountain’s a harder man than your father, my dear. An’ I fear as Joe’s a bit wild, like his father when he was a boy, and obstinit. Theer niver was a obstinater man i’ this earth than Samson Mountain, I do believe, an’ Joe’s got a bit on it in him.’
‘She’s pretty,’ said Dick, returning with sudden childish inconsequence to the subject uppermost in his thoughts. ‘Joe isn’t Why is it that the girls are always prettier than the boys?’
‘I used to think it was the other way about when I was a gell,’ said Aunt Jenny, with perfect simplicity. ‘But she is pretty, that’s true. But then her mother was a likely lass, an’ Samson warn’t bad lookin’, if he hadn’t ha’ been so fierce an’ cussid. An’ to think as it should be you, of all the lads i’ Barfield, as should save a Mountain. An’ a gell too.. I suppose as you’ll be a settin’ up to fall in love wi’ her now, like Romeo and Juliet?’
‘What was that? ‘asked the boy.
‘It’s a play, my dear, wrote by a clever man as has been dead iver so many ‘ears, William Shaakespeare.’
‘Shakespeare?’ said Dick. ‘I know. It’s a big book on one of the shelves at home, full of poetry. But what’s Romeo and Juliet?’