"What is it, my good fellow?" asked the Squire, perceiving his hesitation. "Nothing amiss with your household, I sincerely hope, my friend? You are a fortunate man in one thing—you have had no children yet."
"Ay, ay; your Worship is right enough there. The Lord lends they, and He takes them away. And the taking be worse than the giving was good."
"Now, Master Cripps, we must not talk so. All is meant for the best, I doubt."
"Her may be. Her may be," Cripps replied. "The Lord is the one to pronounce upon that, knowing His own maning best. But He do give very hard measure some time to them as have never desarved it. Now, there be your poor Miss Grace, for instance. As nice a young lady as ever lived; the purtiest ever come out of a bed; that humble, too, and gracious always, that 'Cripps,' she would say—nay 'Master Cripps'—she always give me my proper title, even on a dirty linen day—'Master Cripps,' her always said, 'let me mark it off, in your hat, for you'—no matter whether it was my best hat, or the one with the grease come through—'Master Cripps,' she always say, 'let me mark it out for you.'"
"Very well, Cripps. I know all that. It is nothing to what my Grace was. And I hope, with God's blessing, she will do it again. But what is it you are so full of, Cripps?"
The Carrier felt in the crown of his hat, and then inside the lining; as if he had something entered there, to help him in this predicament. And then he turned away, to wipe—as if the weather was very wet—the drops of the hedge from the daze of his eyes; and after that he could not help himself, but out with everything.
"I knows where Miss Gracie be," he began with a little defiance, as if, after all, it was nothing to him, but a thing that he might have a bet about. "I knows where our Miss Gracie lies—dead and cold—dead and cold—without no coffin, nor a winding-sheet—the purty crature, the purty crature—there, what a fool I be, good Lord!"
Master Cripps, at the picture himself had drawn, was taken with a short fit of sobs, and turned away, partly to hunt for his "kercher," and partly to shun the poor Squire's eyes. Mr. Oglander slowly laid down the pen, which he had taken for notes of a case, and standing as firm as his own great oak-tree (famous in that neighbourhood), gave no sign of the shock, except in the colour of his face, and the brightness of his gaze.
"Go on, Cripps, as soon as you can," he said in a calm and gentle voice. "Try not to keep me waiting, Cripps."
"I be trying; I be trying all I knows. The blessed angel be dead and buried, close to Tickuss's tatie crop, in the corner of bramble quarry. At least, I mean Tickuss's taties was there; but he dug them a fortnight, come Monday, he did."