“Oi did—soon as Jinny come and told us she’d passed you carrying your chest and you might want a hand. Is that the hutch? Dash my buttons, you must ha’ growed up like Samson! Fancy carryin’ that all the way from Chipstone in the strong sun!”
Will did not deny the feat—the explanation would really have been too complicated. In his embarrassment, he overlooked that his father had not really answered his question. “And how’s mother?” he said.
“Mother’s in a great old state. ’Nation mad with Jinny.”
“Why, what’s Jinny done?”
“Sow neglectful. ‘Bein’ as you passed him by,’ says mother to she, ‘why dedn’t you stop and pick up the chest?’ ”
He looked uncomfortable. “And what did Jinny say?”
“She said she dedn’t reckonize the old you when she dreft by, and besides she was singing-like.”
He winced at the reminder of the song, but was grateful to her for telling so truthful a lie: instinctively he felt that his folks having accepted a woman carrier with such brainless acquiescence would fail to enter into the fine shades of his feeling.
“Mother hadn’t a right to make a noise with Jinny,” he said.
“She only kitched of a fire for a moment. ’Twas more over you than over Jinny, Oi should reckon. Bust into tears, she did, and when Oi said maybe as Jinny was mistook she nearly bit my head off. ‘Too lazy-boned to goo and give a hand to your own buoy-oy,’ says she. ‘Ain’t he shifted for hisself nigh ten years?’ says Oi. ‘Can’t you wait ten minutes more? Oi count he’ll be here before the New Jerusalem,’ says Oi. That dedn’t pacify her much, bein’ a female. Cowld-blooded—she called me. ‘There’s feythers,’ says she, ‘as ’ud be trimmed out with colours like Jinny’s hoss—not leave it to a gal as is no relation to decorate even her dog in his honour.’ ‘That’s for May Day,’ says Oi. ‘All wery fine,’ says she. ‘But May Day’s over and gone six days’—she’s a rare un for figgers is mother—‘time enough,’ says she, ‘for God to create the world in.’ ‘Maybe you’d like flags flourishin’ and flutterin’, says Oi, jocoshus like, ‘but Oi ain’t got no flags save my old muckinger.’ And with that, bein’ more shook than I let on, Oi blowed my nose into it, wery trumpet-like, and that seemed to quieten her, for her tantarums be over now, and the onny noise she’s makin’ is the fryin’ o’ them little old weal sausages for you.”