“I did,” said Bithey, “and I says, ‘Becky,’ says I, ‘arter all this standin’, an’ all this talkin’, and all the dust and sawdust flyin’ about, I’m awful dry,’ I says; ‘what would you say,’ says I, ‘to a bottle of Pop?’”
The farmer laughed again, but his wife strongly advised the old couple to have recourse to that restorative, and they therefore toddled away together to drown the memory of their differences and, if possible, of their disappointment in a sparkling and innocuous glass.
THE LOVER’S WRAITH.
“Well, I don’t believe in no such nonsense. Folks do get a-talkin’ and a-carryin’ tales fro’ one to the other, but I never met anybody yet as see a ghost, and I don’t believe nobody ever did!”
“You are wrong for once then,” cried Martha; and she pulled away her arm, the elbow of which had till then been linked in Sam Bundy’s—for the two were “walking” in orthodox fashion—and turned round to face him, an angry flush mounting in her cheeks.
Martha Dale was a very pretty girl, and never more so than in her working dress, which, being of pink cotton, intensified the glow on her cheeks and threw into yet stronger relief the darkness of eyes and hair. A little fitful evening breeze was now playing with the dusky tendrils about her brow, setting one tiny curl dancing, indeed, after a fashion which Sam would have found tantalising at any other time; but now he was too much in earnest.
“It do seem sich a pity for a sensible maid same as you to be took in by sich rubbish.”
“Thank ’ee,” rejoined Martha. “I s’pose my own grandma is a liar then, for ’twas she as told me the tale, and she did say as she saw it wi’ her own eyes.”
“What, a ghost?”
“No, it couldn’t ha’ been a ghost for ’twas the sperret of a man as was alive. ’Twas the custom, she says, for all the young folks to wait outside church-porch at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and if they was to get married during the year they’d see the sperrets of them they was to get married with go into the church and come out again. And they’d see the sperret, or the shape, or whatever ye mid call it, of them as was to die during the year too—only that kind didn’t never come out o’ the church again; they did jist walk in wi’ grave sorrowful faces, and did seem to bide there. But my grandma she telled me often how plain she saw granfer a-comin’ out of church—there, he did pass so close to her she could very nigh ha’ touched him, only she was afeared. And sure enough he axed her two months arter to the very day.”