“Ah! that’s all you know about it.”
She could make the remark with confidence in its truth. There was no record of Jerky ever having had sweetheart, or feeling the soft sentiment of love. And for herself, some pangs of jealousy which Rob Wilde had occasioned her, though unconsciously, made her a believer that hearts could be broken. For this great Forest woman loved like a lioness, and could be jealous as a tigress.
“Oh, well!” rejoined the amiable brother, without taking notice of the slur on his lack of his amatory experience, “it mout be as ye say, sister Winny; supposin’ the young gen’leman’s wounds to prove mortyal. But that an’t like, from all us ha’ heerd the day. So let’s we live in hope. An’ I wudn’t wonner,” he added, in a more cheerful tone; “wudn’t a bit wonner, if, inside this timmer leg o’ mine, theer be somethin’ to tell Sir Richard the Captain an’t in any great danger. Maybe to say him will soon be out o’ prison, an’ bade in his saddle, to cut down another Cavalière or two.”
“Hope that’s the news us be takin’ to High Meadow. Whativer ’tis, let we get theer quick’s us can. Whack on the creetur.”
The final admonition referred to Jinkum; and his master, in obedience to it, gave out the customary “yee-up!” accompanied by the less usual application of cudgel.
A good deal of this last the donkey now needed. The morning had been hot, with the panniers full and heavy, toward the market. Now, on return, it was still sultry, and the wicker weighted as ever, Sir Richard Walwyn was not the strategist to let his scheme have a chance of miscarrying; and Jinkum was bearing back into the Forest country a large consignment of grocery goods; for which the consignee would care little, save as to the time of delivery. But about this he would be particular to an instant, as the cadgers knew; and so, on up the Kymin, Jinkum caught stick, in showers thick as had ever rained upon his hips, even when climbing the sharper and more familiar pitches of Cat’s Hill.