“Did you send a message yesterday morning, then?”
“Ay, did I, when that young dog was going over to the town; and he forgot it, then.”
“I only had the message, as I tell you, to-day.”
“An’ me lying in tarmint all yes’day, and all night listening to the poachers out with their guns. Eh, but it’s sorry work wi’ them and the keepers, and not one on ’em man enough to leave a hare or a fezzan with a poor old woman who’s hidden away many a lot of game for them in her time. Eh, but it’s hard work, lying in my aggynies the long night through, and my neighbour coming to set up with me and nuss me, and going off to sleep, and snoring like a bad-ringed hog.”
“Ah, then your neighbour sat up with you last night, did she?” said Oldroyd.
“Sat up with me? Snored up with me, and nearly drove me wild, my aggynies was that bad. Then she goes and sends Judy to tidy me up after braxfas, and a nice tidying up it was, with her all agog to get away and meet someone I’ll be bound. I dunno who it be, but she’s allus courting somers in the wood. Ah, I went courting once, but now it’s all aggynies.”
“And so you’re in great pain, are you, Mrs Wattley?”
“Aggynies I tellee, aggynies.”
“Ah, it’s rheumatism, old lady, rheumatism.”
“There man, as if I didn’t know that. Think I’ve had these aggynies a-coming on at every change of the wind, and not know as it’s rheumatiz, why, as I says to Miss Lucy Alling, there, as comes over from the big house a’side the common yonder, and brought me a few bits o’ chicking, and sits herself down in that very chair, ‘I’ve had ’em too many years now, my dear, not to know as they’re rheumatiz. I’ll ask Doctor Oldroyd,’ I says, ‘to give me some of they old iles as used to be got when I was younger than I am.’ Fine things they was for the rheumatiz, but they don’t seem to be able to get ’em now.”