“Let be!” sounded in the deep tones of the widow. She checked her son’s impulse towards continued speech with a semaphore-like movement of the lean little arm with the great bony hand at the end of it. “If you have anywhat to say, say it!” she commanded, seeing her unwashed factotum to be in labor with speech.
“Mis’ess,” said Jason, getting out the word with a violent wrench and twist, “since Babylonish luxury and scarlet doings be ’lowed on this here varm, my time ’ooll be up come Mickenmass—and I’ll be ready to up-stick and bundle!” He wagged his shaggy head at his mistress, but his piggy eyes were on her son.
“Silence!” boomed the great voice of Sarah Horrotian. She put up her large hand as the soldier opened his mouth to speak. She set back the rabbit on the blue plate from which it had lapsed as though overwhelmed by the secession of the fogger. Then she folded her lean arms upon her triangular apron-bib, and confronted the shining light with judicial severity.
“Who speaks of luxury and wickedness doing on this place,” she proclaimed, “must make his charge good. Out with yours, man!... Let us hear what you have to say!”
“I were gettin’ my nuncherd o’ bread an’ chaze up to th’ owd barn,” said Jason, with another spasmodic effort, “leanin’ my back agen th’ boards to th’ wind’erd zide of ’n, as I chudd, when I heern a nise-like inzide. Like so!”
The pigman primmed his lips, and brought out a long-drawn, chirping kiss. The sound plopped into the silence as a stone plops into a pond, creating rings of consternation. Two of the three faces the narrator scanned with the bilious little savage eyes under his heavy brake of eyebrow were flaming crimson. The third was pale with wrath, as Sarah exclaimed indignantly:
“Trapesers again!”
“A male man and a female woman,” continued Jason, “kissing and cuddling as though the begetting of bastards were th’ only biznurds they med ha’ come into the world to tend.”
He turned up his eyes and groaned again. The soldier’s leathern stock grew strangling in its embrace. The milk-maid’s bosom lifted on a gasp for air. Josh and Nelly, each in their different way, prayed that the ordeal might be soon over....
Meanwhile thunderclouds gathered upon the high sallow forehead of Mrs. Horrotian, between the scanty loops of her black hair. A suspicion sharpened and yellowed her. She reviewed possible offenders in her narrow mind a moment, then said: