And mind they say their prayers.
Sweet innocents! their heads yence down,
They sleep away their cares!
But gi’ them first a butter-shag;
When young, they munnet want,—
Nor ever sal a bairn o’ mine
While I’ve a bit to grant.”
The Happy Family.
The younger Sandboys took the departure of the villagers more to heart than did their mother; though, true to her woman’s nature, had the trip been anywhere but to London, she would have felt hurt at not making one of the pleasure party. On reaching home, she and Mr. Sandboys congratulated one another that they were not on their way to suffer the miseries of a week’s residence amidst either the dirt or the wickedness of the metropolis; but Elcy and Jobby began, for the first time, to feel that the retirement, which they heard so much vaunted every day, and which so many persons came from all parts of the country to look at and admire, cut them off from a considerable share of the pleasures which all the world else seemed so ready to enjoy, and which they began shrewdly to suspect were not quite so terrible as their father was in the habit of making out.
Thus matters continued at Hassness till the next Tuesday evening, when Mrs. Sandboys remarked that it was “very strange” that “Matthew Harker, t’ grocer, had not been to village” with his pony and cart that day; and what she s’ud do for t’ tea, and sugar, and soft bread, she didn’t know.