As she vanished the new-made husband bent over anxiously to his friend.
‘What do you think of her?’ he remarked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
‘Elias,’ returned his friend wrathfully and reproachfully, ‘I did n’t expect it of ye; no, that I did n’t. At your time of life and arter buryin’ two of ’em! Nay now, I did n’t think it of you. The least you might do was to pick out a staid woman.’
‘Come, come,’ retorted Fiander; ‘she’s young, but that’ll wear off, Isaac—she’ll mend in time.’
‘It bain’t only that she be young,’ resumed Sharpe, still severe and indignant. ‘But I do think, ’Lias, takin’ everything into consideration, that it ’ud ha’ been more natural and more decent, I might say, for you to ha’ got married to somebody more suited to ye. Why, man, your new missus be a regular beauty!’
PART I
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
CHAPTER I
Oh, Sir! the good die first . . .
Wordsworth.
Aa! Nichol’s now laid in his grave,
Bi t’ side of his fadder and mudder;
The warl not frae deoth could yen save,
We a’ gang off,—teane after t’ other.A Cumberland Ballad.
Sunday noontide; and a warm Sunday too. The little congregation pouring out of the ivy-grown church in the hollow seemed to have found the heat within oppressive; the men were wiping their moist brows previous to assuming the hard uncompromising hats which alone could do justice to the day, and the women fanned themselves with their clean white handkerchiefs, or sniffed ostentatiously at the squat, oddly shaped bottles of smelling-salts, or nosegays of jessamine and southernwood, with which they had provided themselves. In the village proper sundry non-churchgoers waited the return of their more pious brethren; one or two lads sat expectantly on stiles, on the look-out for their respective sweethearts, whom they would escort homewards, and with whom they would possibly make appointments for a stroll at some later hour of the day. Children, with important faces, might be seen returning from the bakehouse, carefully carrying the Sunday dinner covered with a clean cloth; and a few older men and women stood about their doorsteps, or leaned over their garden gates, with the intention of waylaying their homeward-bound neighbours and extracting from them items concerning a very important event which had recently taken place in the vicinity.
One very fat old lady, propping herself with difficulty against the lintel of her door, hailed her opposite neighbour eagerly.