"Oh, Mr. Cripps, you are so funny! And you do make me fell things in such a way! Bless me, if I haven't dropped my comb! Oh, I am so shocked to trouble you! Natteral hair are so provoking, compared to what most people wears now-a-days. But about what I come for—oh, your Worship, stockings is not what I ought to speak of, except in the ear of females."
"Stockings are a very good subject, Mary; particularly if they are silk ones."
"Lor, sir! Now, I never thought of that! To be sure, that makes all the difference! Well then, your Worship must know all, and Master Cripps, and Miss Esther, too. It seemeth that Mrs. Fermitage, master's own sister, you know, sir, have never been comfortable in her mind about her behaviour when the 'quest was held. Things lay on her nerves at that time so, that off and on she hardly seemed to know where she was, or how dooty lay to her. Not that she is at all selfish, if you please to understand me—no more selfish than I myself be, or any one of us here present. But ladies requires allowance; and it makes me have a pain to think of it. You could not expect her—could you now?—to go through it, as if she was a man; or rather, I should say, a gentleman."
"Of course we could not," answered Overshute; and the Carrier began to think, why not.
"However, she did go through it," said Mary, "as well as the very best man could have done. She covered her feelings, as you might say, with a pint pot, or with less than that."
"With a wine-glass of brandy, I did hear tell," said Master Cripps inquiringly.
"No, no; that was a shocking story. It makes me ashamed of the place as we live in whenever I heer such scandalies!"
"Miss Mary, my dear, I beg your pardon. Lord knows I only say what I heers! Take a little drop, Miss, and go on."
"It makes one afeared to touch a drop of most hinnocent mixture as ever was," continued poor Mary, after one good gulp; "and at the same time most respectable waters—when people as never had opportunity of forming no judgment about them—people as only can spit out their tongues at them as have some good taste in theirn, when such folk—for people they are not—dareth to go forth to say—— But I see you are laughing at me, your Worship; and perhaps I well deserve it, sir. It is no place of mine to convarse of such subjects—me who never deals with 'em! But, one way or other, that good lady (as, barring her way with her servants, she is, which our good master have many a time, up and given it to her about), well, this very day, sir, in she come when I was a-doing of my morning doos—every bit as partiklar, sir, as if I had a mistress over me; and she say to me, 'Mary Hookham!' and I says, 'Yes, ma'am; at your service.' And she ask me without any more to do—the just words I cannot now call to mind—for to send at once, without troubling poor master, to fetch they stockings as was put by, to the period of the coroner's 'quest. Poor master have never been allowed to see them, no more has none of us, sir; for fear of setting on foot some allowance of vulgar curiosity. And all of us is not above it, I know; but that is a natteral error in places where few has had much eddication."
"I don't hold much with that there eddication," cried the Carrier rather gloomily. "A may suit some people, but not many. They puts it on 'em all alike wi'out trial of constitootion. Some goes better for it; but most volk worse."