Vashti. [Leaning forward.] Was her telling of a marriage?
Jane. Why, yes, Vashti Reed. And you know all about it, only you don’t trouble for to recollect nothing but what you dreams of yourself in the night. ’Tis our Steve what’s going to marry Annie Sims to-morrow.
Vashti. Steve Browning?
Jane. I haven’t patience with th’ old gipsy! Yes—Steve. And ’tis a twelvemonth or more as you’d knowed of it.
Vashti. Our Steve, what’s husband to my May?
Jane. ’Tis a fine thing to fetch up May this evening, that ’tis. May, what went out trolloping along the roads ’stead of she biding at home to mind the house and child! ’Tis how you did breed she up, Vashti Reed, what led her to act as her did. And if you’d have bred her different, ’twould have been all the same; for what’s in the blood is bound to out and show; and when you picks a weed and sets it in the room, ’tain’t no flower as you must look for.
Vashti. ’Tis summat like a twelve year since her went. But in the blinking of an eye the latch might be raised, and she come through the door again. God bless the head an feet of she!
Jane. There you are, Vashti, talking so foolish. A bad herb like she, was bound for to meet her doom. And ’twas in the river up London way where the body of her was catched, floating, and the same petticoat to it as I’ve seed on May a score of times. Don’t you recollect how ’twas parson as brought the news to we?
Vashti. ’Taint with no parsons as I do hold, nor with what may come from the mouths of they, neither.
Jane. And Steve, I knowed what was in his mind when parson was gone out. ’Twas not much as he did say, being a man what hasn’t many words to his tongue. But he took and fetched down his big coat what do hang up yonder, and told I to put a bit of black to the sleeve of it. Leastways, he didn’t speak the words, but I seed what he was after, and I took and sewed a bit on, and he’s wore it ever since till yesterday—And that’s eleven year ago it be—so there.