“I can guess who that is,” she said. “And yet you won’t kill three frogs with one stone.”
Bundock burst into laughter. “So you’ve heard my joke,” he said happily. “I do liven folks up, don’t I, though few have the brains to appreciate aught beyond the Bellman’s silly puns.” Then his ruddy, pitted countenance resumed its melancholy mien. “But I can’t joke about the flood, Jinny, you mustn’t expect me to. There’s poor Charley Mott!”
“Why, what’s he got to do with water?” Jinny jested.
“Haven’t you heard? He’s drowned.”
Jinny’s laugh froze on her lips. Charley had obstinately gone to fish in the troubled waters of the Brad, the postman related, despite the weather. All the Sunday morning he had fished from the dyke, and was just walking off to dine with some pals at “The King of Prussia” when the bank burst, and he was caught by the torrent and smashed among the whirling blocks. It was exactly like the moral of the Spelling-Book, and Jinny saw before her as on a scroll of judgment the grey blurred type of Lesson XV: “Harry’s Downfall.” True, Harry had been torn by wild beasts as well as shipwrecked on the coast of Barbary, but in a country without the larger carnivora a complete analogy could not be expected.
“Poor Mr. Mott,” she sighed. And then, remembering the case put by Uncle Lilliwhyte, had the luckless young man indeed gone straight from water to fire, she wondered. “It’ll be a relief for Mrs. Mott anyhow,” she said.
“A relief?” gasped Bundock. “Why, she’s carrying on like mad. Says it’s all her fault for trying to drive him to chapel. And that it was Deacon Mawhood that egged her on to drive him on the curb. And that he was worth a dozen Deacons, and she won’t have any more to do with you Peculiars. Why, when I brought her the letters this morning, if she hadn’t kept me such a time pouring out all Charley’s virtues, I might have got across before this bridge broke down. Not that I could have delivered my letters anyhow.”
“I think it broke in the night,” said Jinny. Then she fell silent, disconcerted by these illogical manifestations of human nature, and she did not remember where she was till she found Nip tugging at her dress and cowering on the brink of the abyss, as if afraid she would be walking on. The wherry, she perceived too, was now coming up, and young Ravens’ voice was floating melodiously across the waters:
“’Tis my delight of a shiny night
In the season of the year!”