“It strikes me as a most blameless career,” said his companion. “Perhaps, as you say, considering her years, she ought to have known better, but——”
“She sort o’ belongs to the place, as one may say,” Dodge proceeded, evidently quite unaware that he had omitted to give the clue to the situation. “She’s lived here all her life.”
“Then much may be forgiven her,” muttered Mrs. Temperley.
“And everybody respected of her, and the parson he thought a deal o’ her, he did, and used to hold her up as a sample to the other young women, and nobody dreamt as she’d go and bring this here scandal on the place; nobody knows who the man was, but it is said as there’s someone not twenty miles from here as knows more about it nor he didn’t ought to,” Dodge added with sinister meaning. This dark hint conveyed absolutely no enlightenment to the mind of Mrs. Temperley, from sheer lack of familiarity, on her part, with the rumours of the district. Dodge applied himself with a spurt to his work.
“When she had her baby, she was like one out of her mind,” he continued; “she couldn’t stand the disgrace and the neighbours talkin’, and that. Mrs. Walker she went and saw her, and brought her nourishin’ things, and kep’ on a-telling her how she must try and make up for what she had done, and repent and all that; but she never got up her heart again like, and the poor soul took fever from grievin’, the doctor says, and raved on dreadful, accusin’ of somebody, and sayin’ he’d sent her to hell; and then Wensday morning, ten o’clock, she died. Didn’t you hear the passing bell a-tolling, mum?”
“Yes, the wind brought it down the valley; but I did not know whom it was tolling for.”
“That’s who it was,” said Dodge.
“This is an awfully sad story,” cried Mrs. Temperley.
Dodge ran his fingers through his hair judicially. “I don’t hold with them sort o’ goings on for young women,” he observed.
“Do you hold with them for young men?”