‘Then I’m sorry for the rest on ‘em,’ said Ichabod, ‘whoever they may be.’ Here Mrs. Jenny shut the door upon him, leaving him in the street, and retired to her sitting-room. But with beer to be gained by boldness, Ichabod was leonine in courage. He knocked, and the summons brought the old lady to the door again. Ichabod spoke no word, but writhed his twisted features into a grin which expressed at once humorous deprecation and expectancy, and rabbed the back of his veiny hand across his bristly lips.
‘Go round to the brewus,’ said Mrs. Jenny; ‘you’ll find the maid there. It’s all you’re fit for, ye guzzlin’ old idiot.’
Ichabod retired, elate.
‘Her tongue’s a stinger; but, Lord bless thee, Ichabod, her bark’s a long sight worse than her bite. An’ her beer’s main good.’
Mrs. Jenny, meanwhile, retired to the sitting-room, and there sat immersed in gloom. Things looked black for her young protégés, and fate was against them. With that curious interest in familiar trifles which comes with any fit of hopelessness or despondency, she sat looking at the furniture of the room and the pictures which decorated the walls. Among these latter was a work of her own hands, her masterpiece, a reproduction in coloured wool of a German engraving of the last scene of Romeo and Juliet. There was a pea-green Capulet paralytically embracing a sky-blue Montague in the foreground, with a dissolving view of impossibly-constructed servitors of both houses and the County Paris, with six strongly accented bridges to his nose and a worsted tear upon his cheek, in the background. Under this production was worked in white, upon a black ground, the legend which Mrs. Rusker mournfully repeated as she gazed on it—
‘For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo’;
and as she spoke the words an inspiration flashed into her mind. She had her plan.
The new-born idea so possessed her that she could not sit or rest. It drove her out, as the gad-fly drove lo, to devious wanderings in the neighbouring lanes, and as she walked and walked, finding some little ease in the unusual and incessant exercise, she drew nearer and nearer to the Mountain Farm. As she paused on a little eminence and looked towards it, the distant church bell struck clear across the intervening fields, proclaiming nine o’clock.
‘Thank the Lord,’ said the old woman. ‘I can go now. I dussent go too early. They might suspect.’
She made straight for the house, and found Mrs. Mountain alone. Samson was afield, and in answer to Mrs. Busker’s inquiries regarding Julia, Mrs. Mountain tearfully informed her that the poor girl was too ill to come downstairs, and had not eaten a crumb of the tempting breakfast prepared and sent to her room for her. Mrs. Mountain was voluble in condemnation of her husband’s lack of wit in his announcement of the matrimonial scheme he had formed for the girl, and Mrs. Jenny was fluent and honest in sympathy. Might she see the girl? Julia was fond of her, and her counsels might bring some comfort. Mrs. Mountain yielded a ready assent, and the old lady went up to the girl’s room, and entering on the languid summons which followed her knock, saw Julia seated at the window, listless, dejected, and tearful The tears flowed even more freely at the sight of her, and the girl sobbed on her old friend’s breast in full abandonment to the first great grief of her life.