And gaily he rode away."
Another interruption. Some one tried the door—of which Rosaline had a habit of slipping the bolt—and then knocked sharply. Rosaline opened it. A rough-looking woman, miserably attired, stood there: an inhabitant of one of the poorest dwellings in this quarter.
"I wants to know," cried this woman, in a voice as uncouth as her speech, and with a dialect that needs translation for the uninitiated reader, "whether they vools o' men be at work to-day."
"I think not," replied Rosaline.
"There's that man o' mine gone off again to the Golden Shaaft, and he'll come hoam as he did yesternight! What tha plague does they father go and fill all they vools up weth lies about they Whistlers for? That's what I'd like to know. If Bell had heered they Whistlers, others 'ud hev heered they."
"I can't tell you anything at all about it, Mrs. Janes," returned Rosaline, civilly but very distantly; for she knew these people to be immeasurably her inferiors, and held them at arm's-length. "You can ask my father about it yourself; he'll be here by-and-by. I can't let you in now; mother's just as poorly as ever to-day, and she cannot bear a noise."
Closing the door as she spoke, and slipping the bolt, lest rude Mrs. Janes should choose to enter by force, Rosaline took up her song again.
"I watched from the topmost, topmost height,
Till the sun's bright beams were o'er,
And the pale moon shed her vestal light—