‘Coach,
Carriage,
Spring-cart,
Wheelbarrow.’
Wasn’t there one more, Barbara? Oh, yes, about the dress materials:
“Well, well!” exclaimed Betty. “I never heard those. They must be just English.”
“Perhaps so. At any rate, when I was a little girl, I used to say them, and believe in them, too. I lived here in Warwickshire, in my childhood, you know; my father was rector of a tiny village not far from Coventry. There are ever so many queer old rhymes, verses, and customs still common among Warwickshire children.”
“Tell Betty about some of them, Mother,” Barbara urged. “I’m sure that she’d like to hear, and we don’t need to start on just yet.”
Mrs. Pitt leaned thoughtfully against the lowered bars, at the entrance to a field. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said; but she soon added, “There was the ‘Wishing Tree.’ I remember that.”
“What was it?” the two girls eagerly questioned. John and Philip, privately considering this talk “silly stuff,” had retired to the farther side of a hay-rick, where they were whittling industriously.
“The ‘Wishing Tree’ was a large elm that stood in the park of a neighboring nobleman’s estate. To all the girls of the village, it was a favorite spot, and we used to steal through the hedge and very cautiously approach the tree. If the cross old gardener happened to see us he’d come limping in our direction as fast as his lame legs could carry him, calling out angrily that if we did not ‘shog off right away, he’d set his ten commandments in our faces.’ That’s an odd expression, isn’t it? It’s very, very old,—so old that Shakespeare was familiar with it and used it in one of his plays—‘King Henry VI,’ I think. The gardener meant that he would scratch us with his ten fingers—but he wouldn’t have, for he was too kind-hearted in spite of his threats. He was a queer man, with a brown, wrinkled old face. I can see him just as though it were yesterday.”
“What was that you said?” asked Betty. “‘Shog off!’ What does it mean?”