"There's wicked words being said about a lot of things. It's been said, for instance, up and down the Vale, that you've told a score you be going to marry me, Joe. That's a proper wicked thing, I should think."
He was much concerned.
"Good God! What a nest of echoes we live in! But there it is. When a thing's in the air—whether 'tis fern seed, or a bit of scandal, or a solemn truth, it will settle and stick and grow till the result appears. No doubt the general sense of the folk, knowing how I've felt to you for years, made up this story and reckoned it was one of they things that Providence let out before the event. Marriages be made in Heaven they say, Melinda."
"But they ain't blazed abroad on earth, I believe, afore both parties choose to mention it."
"Most certainly not; but if you move in the public eye, people will be talking."
"Yes, they will, if they be started talking. I met Ann Slocombe to Lower Town three days agone and she congratulated me on my engagement to you."
"Who the devil's Ann Slocombe?"
"She's a woman very much like other women. And I told her it was stuff and nonsense, and far ways from anything that had happened, or was going to happen."
"No need to have said that, I hope. 'Tis the curious case of——"
"'Tis the curious case of talking before you know," said Melinda tartly. "What would you have thought if I'd told people you'd gone down to Brixham, to offer yourself to a woman there?"