“I don’t say as they be a-goin’ wrong,” she remarked after a pause, “but they don’t seem to be a-goin’ right. Foyle, there, he haven’t got the spirit of a mouse.”
“Hasn’t he said nothin’—nothin’ at all?” inquired Mrs. Fry, resting a plump hand on either knee and leaning forward.
“Not a single word,” replied her friend; “that’s to say, not a word wi’ any sense in it. An’ Sibley have been gone six months now, mind ye.”
“So he have!” replied Mrs. Fry. “An’ ye mid say as you’ve been so good as a widder for nigh upon six year—ye mid indeed. A husband what’s in the ’sylum is worse nor no husband at all. An’ ye’ve a-been keepin’ house for Foyle these four year, haven’t ye?”
“Four year an’ two month,” responded Mrs. Sibley. “There, the very day after Mrs. Foyle were buried he did come to me an’ he says so plain-spoke as anything, ‘Mrs. Sibley,’ he says, ‘here be you a lone woman wi’out no family, an’ here be I wi’ all they little childern. Will ’ee come an’ keep house for I an’ look after ’em all? Ye’ll not be the loser by it,’ he says. So I looks him straight in the face: ‘I bain’t so sure o’ that, Mr. Foyle,’ I says. ‘I do look at it in this way, d’ye see. A woman has her chances,’ I says. ‘I don’t think Sibley ’ull last so very long—they seldom does at the ’sylum—an’ then here be I, a lone woman, as you do say. I mid very well like to settle myself again; an’ if I go an’ bury myself so far away from town in a place where there’s sich a few neighbours, I don’t see what prospects I’ll have.’”
“Well, that was straightforward enough,” commented Mrs. Fry. “He couldn’t make no mistakes about your meanin’.”
“He could not,” agreed Mrs. Sibley triumphantly; “an’ what’s more, he didn’t. He up an’ spoke as plain as a man could speak. ‘Well, Mrs. Sibley,’ he says, ‘there’s a Fate what rules us all.’ He be always a-sayin’ off bits o’ po’try an’ sich-like as he gets from the gravestones, ye know.”
“Ah,” remarked Mrs. Fry nodding, “being the sexton, of course, it do come nat’ral to ’en, don’t it?”
“‘There’s a Fate what rules us all,’ he says,” resumed Mrs. Sibley, “‘an’ we didn’t ought to m’urn as if we had no hope. If you was a free ’ooman, Mrs. Sibley—well, I’m a free man, and I’d make so good a husband as another. Maria did always find I so,’ he says.”
“Well, the man couldn’t have said more.”