“Ye may say so,” she said, with a discontented emphasis.
“I’d tell you a thing in a minute, old Tarnley, only they say old vessels must leak. Will you be staunch? Will ye hold your tongue on’t if I tell you a thing?”
“Ay,” said Mildred.
“Because one barking dog sets all the street a-barking, ye know,” he added.
“Ye know me well, Master Harry. I could hold my tongue always when there was need.”
“And that’s the reason I’m going to talk to you,” said Harry, “and no one knows it, mind, but yourself, and if it gets out I’ll know who to blame.”
“’Twon’t get out for me,” said Mildred, looking hard at him.
“One devil drubs another, they say, and if the young Squire upstairs has a foot in the mud I’ve one in the mire,” said Harry. “If his hat has a hole, my shoe has another. And ’tis a bad bargain where both are losers.”
“Well, I can’t see it nohow. I don’t know what you’re drivin’ at; but I think you’re no fool, Master Harry; ye never was that, and it’s a cunning part, I’ve heered, to play the fool well.”
And Harry did look very cunning as she cited this saw, and for a moment also a little put out. But he quickly resumed, and staring in her face surlily, said he—