“Shake ’ands with that chap? I’d suner shake ’ands with a dead pig. Let ’im get my son back out o’ the Army.”
The schoolmistress looked up at him.
“And I hope you’re going to look after that poor girl when her time comes,” she said.
Bowden nodded.
“Never fear! I’d suner the child was hers than that niece of Steer’s.”
The schoolmistress was silent.
“Well,” she said at last, “it’s an unchristian state of mind.”
“Yu go to Steer, ma’am, an’ see whether he’ll be more Christian-like. He ’olds the plate out Sundays.”
This was precisely what the good lady did, more perhaps from curiosity than in proselytizing mood.
“What!” said Steer, who was installing a beehive; “when that God-darned feller put his son up to jilting my niece!”