“Ah,” interrupted Mrs. Cross, beginning to think she at last saw daylight, “he was a stranger, was he?”
“He was a man what come to the door,” returned the other impressively, “what come to the door like any tramp. I did take en to be a tramp first off.”
“Oh, and he wasn’t a tramp then?” put in her neighbour, slightly disappointed.
“He mid ha’ been one,” resumed the narrator, with a dignified wave of the hand intended to discourage further unnecessary and frivolous questions. “I’m willing to tell ’ee about it, Mrs. Cross, if you be willing to listen. ’Twas a Sunday of all days. We’d a’ been pretty busy till dinner-time. I’d got Jenny up soon arter four to get through wi’ cleanin’ up—I’m always one what likes to have the place reg’lar perfect, ye know—and by the time I come down for breakfast she’d a’ got everything straight. Well, her an’ me fell out—she did want if ye please to go to church wi’ I—so I says to her, ‘Who’s to get dinner then? Be I to wait on you?’ says I. ‘No,’ I says, ‘you stay at home and do your dooty, and you can go to the childern’s service in the afternoon if you behave well,’ says I. Well, but she wouldn’t hear reason; I did leave her cryin’ like a baby.
“I were a bit late comin’ back—chattin’ to this one and that one, an’ when I got in, what did I see but a strange man by the fire. Ye could ha’ knocked I down wi’ a feather. I did jist drap in the first chair I come to and p’int that way wi’ my finger—I couldn’t get out a word.
“‘Please ye, ma’am,’ says Jenny (I wouldn’t have her callin’ I Cousin Maria, d’ye see, a little maid same as her out of a institootion! She did offer to call I so once or twice, but I soon checked her). ‘Please ye, ma’am,’ she says, ‘this ’ere poor chap was so terr’ble cold—froze up he was—he’d a-been walkin’ ten mile an’ more in the snow; and when he axed I to let en in to warm hisself a bit, I didn’t think you’d object.’
“‘You didn’t think I’d object,’ says I. ‘You little good-for-nothin’ hussy! We might ha’ been robbed an’ murdered for all you care.’
“The man turned round laughin’ as impident as ye like. He was a Irishman, Mrs. Cross—I could tell it the very minute I clapped eyes on his face, afore he so much as opened his mouth, and when he did begin to speak, Lard ha’ mercy me! I never did hear sick languidge.”
“Swearin’ an’ that?” questioned Mrs. Cross, with her head on one side.
“Oh no, nothin’ o’ that sort, but sick a queer, ignorant fayshion o’ talkin’. ‘The top o’ the mornin’ to ye, ma’am,’ says he. ‘Is it murther ye’re talkin’ of? Sure, how could I be afther murtherin’ ye when ye weren’t here?’ he says. ‘Don’t ye be afeerd,’ he went on—I can’t really remember his queer talk, but he said he had come over harvestin’ an’ then got laid up wi’ a fever, an’ was a long time in hospital, and now, he said, he was on his way to see a friend who had been in the hospital at the same time, and after that he had the promise of work.