“Let me help you over here,” answered the stone-carver, “that Priory wench was talking, just now, just across yon wall. She’ll be hearing what we say if we don’t move on a bit.”
“Us don’t mind what a maid like her do hear, do us, Luke dear?” whispered the girl in answer. “Give me a kiss, sonny, and let me be getting home-along!”
She stood on tiptoe and raised her hands over the top of the wall. Luke seized her wrists, and retained them in a vicious clutch.
“Put your foot into one of those holes,” he said, “and we’ll soon have you across.”
Unwilling to risk a struggle in such a spot, and not really at all disinclined for an adventure, the girl obeyed him, and after being hoisted up upon the wall, was lifted quickly down on the other side, and enclosed in Luke’s gratified arms. The amorous stone-carver remembered long afterwards the peculiar thrill of almost chaste pleasure which the first touch of her cold cheeks gave him, as she yielded to his embrace.
“Is Nin Lintot bad again?” she enquired, drawing herself away at last.
Luke nodded. “You won’t see her about, this week—or next week—or the week after,” he said. “She’s pretty far gone, this time, I’m afraid.”
Phyllis rendered to her acquaintance’s misfortune the tribute of a conventional murmur.
“Oh, let’s go and look at where they be burying Jimmy Pringle!” she suddenly whispered, in an awe-struck, excited tone.
“What!” cried Luke, “you don’t mean to say he’s dead,—the old man?”