A great shout of laughter rose from the hired men: only Will went on shearing with apparent imperturbability, while a third carmine speck defaced the smooth surface of his martyred sheep.
“Where’s the laugh?” inquired Master Peartree.
“Don’t rob a poor man of his beer,” carolled young Ravens. “She don’t drink,” he broke off to explain.
“Yes, I do, I drink like a fish. Water, that is, like that does.”
This time even Master Peartree laughed, while Jim Puddifoot, raising his tin mug without a handle to his mouth, cried “Here’s to you,” and young Ravens lifting up his pleasant voice trolled forth:
“Robin he married a wife in the West,
Moppety, moppety, mono.”
Little stabs and pricks were going through Will’s breast, and still more through the skin of his sheep. As the chorus, from which Jinny’s little trill was not excluded, took up:
“With a high jig jiggity, tops and petticoats,
Robin-a-Thrush cries mono,”