“’Tis just as mad a thought wan way as t’other, and if you’m surprised so be I. To be a tale-bearer at your time o’ life!”
“That gormed Blanchard’s bewitched ’e from fust to last!” burst out Billy. “If a angel from heaven comed down-long and tawld ’e the truth ’bout un, you wouldn’t b’lieve. God stiffen it! You make me mad! You’d stand ’pon your head an’ waggle your auld legs in the air for un if he axed ’e.”
“I’ll speak to him straight an’ take his word for it. If it’s true, he ’m wickedly to blame, I knaw that.”
“I was thinkin’ of your darter. ’Tis black thoughts have kept her waking since this reached her ears.”
“Did you tell her what people were sayin’? I warrant you did!”
“You’m wrong then. No such thing. I may have just heaved a sigh when I seed the bwoy playin’ in front of her, an’ looked at Blanchard, an’ shook my head, or some such gentle hint as that. But no more.”
“Well, I doan’t believe a word of it; an’ I’ll tell you this for your bettering,—’tis poor religion in you, Blee, to root into other people’s troubles, like a pig in a trough; an’ auld though you be, you ’m not tu auld to mind what it felt like when the blood was hot an’ quick to race at the sight of a maid.”
“I practice same as I preach, whether or no,” said Billy stoutly, “an’ I can’t lay claim to creating nothing lawful or unlawful in my Maker’s image. ’Tis something to say that, in these godless days. I’ve allus kept my foot on the world, the flesh, an’ the Devil so tight as the best Christian in company; an’ if that ban’t a record for a stone, p’raps you’ll tell me a better. Your two-edged tongue do make me feel sometimes as though I did ought to go right away from ’e, though God knaws—God, He knaws—”
Billy hid his face and began to weep, while Mr. Lyddon watched the candle-light converge to a shining point upon his bald skull.
“Doan’t go against a word in season, my dear sawl. ’Tis our duty to set each other right. That’s what we’m put here for, I doubt. Many’s the time you’ve given me gude advice, an’ I’ve thanked ’e an’ took it.”