“Use proper talk, else I’ll tell ’e nowt,” she threatened.
“I will, I vow! From now I’m the best boy in the Sunday-school,—mild as a dish o’ milk, and as mealy-mouthed as Old Pooker—not that he’s a bad sort, as the white-chokered corps go!”
“See you keep your word! Well then.... Says my customer to I....”
“Meaning Jason?...”
“Meaning Jason. Says he, smirking all over his face, as how I be a main pretty maid; and he have wrestled in prayer upon the matter, and med-be if I looked out wi’ my bright eyes sharp enough, I should see myself standin’ up before the Minister to Market Drowsing Baptist Chapel, being preached into one flesh wi’ he—he—he!”
Josh drew a deep breath, inflating his broad chest to the utmost of its lung-capacity and bellowed:
“And this is the man as down-cries all women. Why, he got round mother that way, cussing of the female sex for traps and snares and Babylonish harlots, though why that kind o’ talk should tickle her, hang me if I know! her being a woman herself, by way of!... But how did you meet the bold wooer?...”
“Tossed up my chin like so”—she furnished a distracting example—“and telled ’n as no living minister should mold me into one flesh wi’ any mortal man!”
“Having been regularly tied up in the matrimony-knot by a parson—my blessings on his tallow face!” said Josh, with a triumphant hug, “that snowy day in January when you met me at the little iron church down the Stoke Road near Dullingstoke Junction, wi’ the license buttoned in the pocket of my borrowed suit o’ plain clothes, and the ring jammed on my little finger so precious tight—for fear of losing it!—that it took you and me and the beadle to get it off again!”
Upon the strength of these reminiscences he did some more hugging. She freed herself from the enclosing girdle of warm, muscular flesh and hot blood, pouting: