“More than you’ve ever called me,” said Jinny, herself inclined to laugh and cry and even to kiss.
The story was interrupted by an idyllic interlude. “But I expect Gran’fer’s rather short-sighted without a telescope,” she commented, disentangling herself blushingly.
“I was in the Master’s room,” resumed Will, “speaking to him about the funeral, and hearing a lot about the guardians and the parish authorities and such-like grand folk, when in rushes Jims and pants out his tale, and we all race around till we find the old couple coming down the staircase with arms round each other’s waists, and your Gran’fer tells us fiercely he’s taking her away, and opens the teapot to show he can support two wives if he wants to! ‘Hold hard!’ says the Master. ‘I won’t stop you, though I ought to have twenty-four hours notice, because I know the guardians haven’t made such a good bargain with Mr. Skindle that they’ll try to keep her, but you can’t take away the parish clothes.’ For of course the old woman was wearing that blue cotton dress——”
“It’s got white stripes if you look close,” put in Jinny.
“ ‘Well, Oi can’t take her away without clothes,’ roared your Gran’fer. He said he counted it unrespectable enough that they should allow her to wash a strange old man, alone in a room, and that if they didn’t mend their ways he’d have a piece put in the paper about it all. ‘Well, let ’em give me back my own clothes,’ says Mrs. Skindle. ‘I’ve got to have twenty-four hours’ notice about that,’ says the Master. ‘Ha, you’ve stole ’em!’ says your Gran’fer. ‘You be careful what you’re sayin’,’ says the Master, bridling up. ‘Who wants her rags and jags?’ But in the end it was all settled friendlywise—your Gran’fer buying up some of the cast-off grandeur of the matron’s (they drove a good bargain with your Gran’fer, the pair of screws, but he was free and flush with his teapot), and off the happy pair went at last, the bride as spruced up as the bridegroom, and I saw him hand her into the wedding-cart with her bouquet, while the old gentlemen in the corduroys and the old ladies in blue, and especially the little orphans, raised a cheer. Even Jims waved. I expect he’d had a drop out of the teapot.”
“Daniel Quarles, Carrier-Off,” laughed Jinny, half hysterically, for scandalized and startled though she was, a rosy light, whose source was yet unclear to her, seemed rising on her horizon.
“I went up to the cart under pretence of patting Nip,” Will went on, “and asked the old boy where he was off to. ‘Home, of course,’ he answers friendly. ‘You should be going to chapel first, you old rip,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to be married in church,’ answers Mrs. Skindle stiffly. ‘I’m Church of England.’ ‘That’s all right, Annie,’ he says, patting her hand, ‘we’ll look in on Mr. Fallow about they banns,’ and singing ‘Oi’m Seventeen come Sunday,’ drives off with her.”
But Jinny refused to sympathize with the course of true love. “He’s not really going to marry her?” she now cried. “But that’s dreadful!”
“You scandalous creature! It would be more dreadful if he didn’t!”
“But at his age!”