“Why, bless your ’art, mum, he ain’t been there, or we must have heerd him in the belfry.”
“You’ve been there all the evening then?” said Mrs Jared.
“Ah! that we have, mum—’leven of us, practising for Chrismus. We pulled grand-sire caters, ’sire tribbles, and s’perlative s’prise major. Never had a finer night, nor more beer up in my time.”
“But could you have heard the organ up in the belfry?” said Patty, who had been escorted home by Monsieur Canau quite late in the evening from the shadowed house in Decadia.
“Heard it! bless your ’art, yes, Miss, a rooring away sometimes loud enough to put yer out, and drown the one that leads and cries ‘go,’ when we makes the change, you know. That there organ ain’t blowed a note, nor there ain’t been no light in the church this side o’ eight o’clock. And besides, I seed the pleece a kickin’ and a cuffin’ of young Leathers for shyin’ snowballs at the busties.”
“Who?” exclaimed Mrs Jared and Patty in a breath.
“Young Charity, mum, young Ikey Gunnis. Howsomever, if it’s a coming to who’ll go, I’ll go, you know; but I’m afeard most of our chaps is about tight—just a little sunny, you know,” he added by way of explanation, “for the beer did run free to-night, and no mistake—and I hardly know who else to get, without it’s a pleeceman, and they’re so precious ’ficious. You see, people’s abed now; and I should ha’ been there myself if the young missus hadn’t come and roused me out. I was asleep aside the kitchen-fire when she come, for there was a sight o’ beer up the belfry to-night sewerly.”
“I still think that he must have gone to the vicar’s,” said Patty to her mother. “I knocked as loudly as I could at the church-door, and there seemed to be no one there.”
“Perhaps, after all, we had better wait another half-hour,” said Mrs Jared.
“Let me go with Mr Chawner,” said Patty, eagerly. “The Purkises may have come back now, and they would not mind giving us the keys. I dare say Mr Purkis would go with us, late as it is. He would have gone with me before, I am sure, had he been at home.”