The fiddler made a squeak on two notes that sounded like kiss-her, and from a corner of the booth there came a clamorous smack of lips.
"I saw you sweetheartin' laal Bessie," said one of the fellows to another.
"And I saw you last night cutteran sa soft in the meadow. Nay, dunnot look sa strange. I never say nowt, not I. Only yon mother of Aggy's, she's a famous fratcher, and dunnot you let her get wind. She brays the lasses, and mappen she'll bray somebody forby."
While the dancing proceeded there was a noisy clatter of glasses and a mutter of voices in the neighborhood of the bar.
"The varra crony one's fidgin to see! Gie us a shak' of thy daddle!" shouted a fellow with a face like a russet apple.
"Come, Dick, let's bottom a quart together. Deil tak' the expense."
"Why, man, and wherever hasta been since Whissen Monday?"
"Weel, you see, I went to the fair and stood with a straw in my mouth, and the wives all came round, and one of them said, 'What wage do you ask, canny lad?' 'Five pounds ten,' I says. 'And what can you do?' she says. 'Do?' I says, 'anything from plowing to threshing and nicking a nag's tail,' I says. 'Come, be my man,' she says. But she was like to clem me, so I packed up my bits of duds and got my wage in my reet-hand breek pocket, and here I am."
The dancing had finished, and a little group was gathered around the fiddler's tub.
"Come thy ways; here's Tom o' Dint conjuring, and telling folk what they are thinking."