The girl raised her hand to her heart, and Miller Lyddon, attracted by Billy’s excited voice, hastened to his daughter and put his arm round her.
“Out with it,” he said. “I see news in ’e. What’s the worst or best?”
“Bad, bad as heart can wish. A peck o’ trouble, by the looks of it. Chris Blanchard be gone—vanished like a dream! Mother Blanchard called her this marnin’, an’ found her bed not so much as creased. She’ve flown, an’ there’s a braave upstore ’bout it, for every Blanchard’s wrong in the head more or less, beggin’ your pardon, missis, as be awnly wan by marriage.”
“But no sign? No word or anything left?”
“Nothing; an’ theer’s a purty strong faith she’m in the river, poor lamb. Theer’s draggin’ gwaine to be done in the ugly bits. I heard tell of it to the village, wheer I’d just stepped up to see auld Lezzard moved to the work’ouse. A wonnerful coorious, rackety world, sure ’nough! Do make me giddy.”
“Does Will know?” asked Mr. Lyddon.
“His mother’s sent post-haste for un. I doubt he ’m to the cottage by now. Such a gude, purty gal as she was, tu! An’ so mute as a twoad at the buryin’, wi’ never a tear to soften the graave dust. For why? She knawed she’d be alongside her man again ’fore the moon waned. An’ I hope she may be. But ’t was cross-roads an’ a hawthorn stake in my young days. Them barbarous ancient fashions be awver, thank God, though whether us lives in more religious times is a question, when you see the things what happens every hour on the twenty-four.”
“I must go to them,” cried Phoebe.
“I’ll go; you stop at home quietly, and don’t fret your mind,” answered her father.
“Us must all do what us can—every manjack. I be gwaine corpse-searchin’ down valley wi’ Chapple, an’ that ’mazin’ water-dog of hisn; an’ if ’t is my hand brings her out the Teign, ’t will be done in a kind, Christian manner, for she’s in God’s image yet, same as us; an’ ugly though a drownin’ be, it won’t turn me from my duty.”