“Eh, Hodge, my lad!” said Grandfather Hall, shaking his white head, as he sat leaning his hands upon his silver-headed staff, “but ’tis a strange dispensation this! Surely I never looked for such as this in mine old age. But ’tis my blame—I do right freely confess ’tis my blame. I reckoned I wrought for the best; I meant nought save my maid’s happiness: but I see now I had better have been content with fewer of the good things of this life for the child, and have taken more thought for an husband that feared God. Surely I meant well,—yet I did evil; I see it now.”
“Father,” said Roger, with respectful affection, “I pray you, remember that God’s strange dispensations be at times the best things He hath to give us, and that of our very blunders He can make ladders to lift us nearer to Himself.”
“Ay, lad, thou hast the right; yet must I needs be sorry for my poor child, that suffereth for my blunder. Hodge, I would thou wouldst visit her.”
“That will I, Father, no further than Saint Edmund’s Day, the which you wot is next Tuesday. Shall I bear her any message from you?”
Old Mr Hall considered an instant; then he put his hand into his purse, and with trembling fingers pulled out a new shilling.
“Bear her this,” said he; “and therewithal my blessing, and do her to wit that I am rarely troubled for her trouble. I cannot say more, lest it should seem to reflect upon her husband: but I would with all mine heart—”
“Well, Nell!” said a voice in the passage outside which everybody knew. “Your master’s at home, I count, being a holy-day? The old master here likewise?—that’s well. There, take my pattens, that’s a good maid. I’ll tarry a bit to cheer up the little mistress.”
“Oh dear!” said Christabel in a whisper, “Aunt Tabitha won’t cheer me a bit; she’ll make me boil over. And I’m very near it now; I’m sure I must be singing! If she’d take me off and put me on the hob! Aunt Alice would, if it were she.”
“Good-morrow!” said Aunt Tabitha’s treble tones, which allowed no one else’s voice to be heard at the same time. “Give you good-morrow, Father, and the like to thee, Christie. Well, Roger, I trust you’re in a forgiving mood this morrow? You’ll have to hammer at it a while, I reckon, afore you can make out that Edward Benden’s an innocent cherub. I’d as lief wring that man’s neck as eat my dinner!—and I mean to tell him so, too, afore I do it.”
Aunt Tabitha left her sentence grammatically ambiguous, but practically lucid enough to convey a decided impression that a rod for Mr Benden was lying in tolerably sharp pickle.