“How would you collect it, Uncle Dan?”
“Nay, there thou floors me. They’d best send down a chap all over steel to th’ smithy, He’d get plucked o’ pieces else. Well, God be wi’ thee, Avice. God bless thee, Bertha, my lass. Good-night!”
And Uncle Dan disappeared into the darkness. There were no street lamps then. Every man had to carry his own lantern, unless he chose to run the risk of breaking his neck over the round stones which formed the streets, or the rough ground, interspersed with holes and pits, to be found everywhere else.
They now sat down to work for the rest of the evening, Avice on the settle in the corner, Bertha on one of the low stools which she brought up to the hearth.
“Lack-a-day! what have I forgot!” said Avice as Bertha drew up her stool and unfolded the apron she was making. “I thought to have asked Nora Goldhue for a sprig of betony, or else purslane. ’Tis o’er late to-night, and verily I am too weary to go forth again.”
“Have you bad dreams, Aunt?” asked Bertha, knowing that a sprig of either of those herbs under the pillow was believed to drive them away.
“Ay, child; they have troubled me these four nights past, but last night more especially.”
No wonder, after a supper on franche-mule! But it never occurred to ignorant Avice that supper and dreams could have anything to do with one another.
“Shall I fetch you a laurel leaf, Aunt?” suggested Bertha.
“Ay, do, child; maybe that shall change the luck. Best go ere it rain, too; and that will not be long, for I saw a black snail in the channel as we came in.”