“Eh, bless you, there’s no love about it. Just like them men! they’d shut a woman’s mouth up as tight as a fish, and never give her no leave to speak a word, if they had their way. But I’m not one of your meek bag-puddings, that’ll take any shape you pinch ’em,—not I, forsooth; and he knows it. I’ll have my say, soon or late, and Prissy, she’s a downright chatterbox. Not that I’m that, you know—not a bit of it: but Prissy, she is; and I can tell you, when Prissy and Dorcas and Ben they’re all at it, the house isn’t over quiet, for none on ’em hearkens what t’others are saying, and their father whacks ’em by times—ay, he doth! Now, Caleb, what’s to do?”
“Nothing particular, Mother,” said slow, deliberate Caleb through the open window: “only there’s yon pedlar with the mercery, and he willn’t tarry only ten minutes more—”
“Thou lack-halter rascal, and ne’er told me while I asked thee!”
The parlour of the White Bear was free in another moment.
“There’s a deliverance!” said Mr Lewthwaite. “Blessed be the pedlar!—Have you been much pestered by that gadfly?”
“There’s been a bit of buzzing by times,” replied Temperance.
“Now, Mother, darling,” said Milisent, “how are we to carry you down home?”
“My dear child!” was the response. “Methinks, if you would do that, it should be only in my coffin. I have one journey to go soon, and it is like to be the next.”
“Mother, sweet heart, I won’t have it! You shall yet win to Selwick, if I carry you every foot of the way.”
“Nay, nay, my dear heart, I cannot hope that at fourscore.”