“More trouble?” he said. “Yet I doan’t think it,—not now,—just as I be right every way. I guess ’t is your state makes you queer an’ glumpy.”
“I hope ’t was vain talk an’ not true anyway.”
“More talk ’bout me? You’d think Chagford was most tired o’ my name, wouldn’t ’e? Who was it now?”
“Him—Jan Grimbal. I met him ’mong the mushrooms. He burst out an’ said wicked, awful things, but his talk touched the li’l bwoy. He thought Tim was yourn an’ he was gwaine to do mischief against you.”
“Damn his black mind! I wonder he haven’t rotted away wi’ his awn bile ’fore now.”
“But that weern’t all. He talked an’ talked, an’ threatened if you didn’t go an’ see him, as he’d tell ’bout you in the past, when you was away that autumn-time ’fore us was married.”
“Did he, by God! Doan’t he wish he knawed!”
“He does knaw, Will—least he said he did.”
“Never dream it, Phoebe. ’T is a lie. For why? ’Cause if he did knaw I shouldn’t—but theer, I’ve never tawld ’e, an’ I ban’t gwaine to now. Awnly I’ll say this,—if Grimbal really knawed he’d have—but he can’t knaw, and theer ’s an end of it.”
“To think I should have been frighted by such a story all these weeks! An’ not true. Oh! I wish I’d told ’e when he sent the message. ’T would have saved me so much.”