“Aye, hard, but what did Cardo Parry do?”
The two women lowered their voices, and with that naïve liking old age often has for repulsive tales, they rolled this particular story as a sweet morsel under their tongues. Keturah forgot to rub her old shin, and the two women confronted each other in the candle-lighted room with bright eyes in which every skip of the flame from the coals over the shining brasses was reflected.
“Tudur Williams was right!” exclaimed Keturah.
“Aye, Tudur Williams is always right; but do you believe in it?”
“Aye, aye, I do indeed.”
“Tut, Keturah, believe that? I cannot. Ye’re that trustin’, ye’d believe the whale swallowed Jonah, indeed.”
“Aye, so I do,” fervently affirmed Keturah; “that blessed story I heard from the master’s father first, and I’ve heard it often from the master himself. ’Tis true as the Lord’s Prayer.”
“Pooh!” sniffed Deb, with the superiority of one indulging in the higher criticism; “if the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale ye’d believe that, too!”
“Aye, aye, indeed, iss, iss, if the Bible said so,” admitted Keturah simply; “but the Bible don’t.”
“Well,” Deb hastened to add, with a sense of having been on tottering exegetical foundations, “I dunno. But if I was to say the pastor would marry my mistress, would ye believe that, now would ye?”