“Aw, boy veen, boy veen,” cried Grannie, “you was used to be a good man, but you have fell off very bad.”
Kate was in a fever of eagerness. She wanted to open her heart to Pete, to beg him to spare her, to tell him that it was impossible that they should ever marry. Pete would see that Philip was her husband by every true law, human and divine. In this mood she lived through much of the following day, Friday, tossing and turning in bed, for the exhaustion of the day in Douglas had confined her to her room again.
In the evening she came downstairs, and was established in the fire-seat as before. There were four or five old women in the kitchen spinning yarn for a set of blankets which Grannie intended for a wedding present. “When the day's work was nearly done, two or three old men, the old husbands of the old women, came to carry their wheels home again. Then, as the wheels whirred for the last of the twist, Pete set the old crones to tell stories of old times.
“Tell us of the days when you were young, Anne,” said Pete to an ancient dame of eighty. Her husband of eighty-four sat sucking his pipe by her side.
“Well,” said old Anne, stretching her arms to the yarn, “I was as near going foreign, same as yourself, sir, just as near, now, as makes no matter. It was the very day I married this man, and his brother was making a start for Austrillya. Jemmy was my ould sweetheart, only I had given him up because he was always stealing my pocket-handkerchers. But he came that morning and tapped at my window, and 'Will you come, Anne?' says he, and I whipped on my perricut and stole out and down to the quay with him. But my heart was losing me when I saw the white horses on the water, and home I came and went to church with this one instead.”
While old Anne told her story her old husband opened his mouth wider and wider, until the pipe-shank dropped out of his toothless gums on to his waistcoat. Then he stretched his left arm and brought down his clenched hand with a bang on to her shoulder.
“And have you been living with me better than sixty years,” said he, “and never telling me that before?”
Pete tried to pacify his ancient jealousy, but it was not to be appeased, and he shouldered the wheel and hobbled off, saying, “And I sent out two pound five to put a stone on the man's grave!”
There was loud laughter when the old couple were gone, but Pete said, nevertheless, “A sacret's a sacret, though, and the ould lady had no right to tell it. It was the dead man's sacret too, and she's fouled the ould man's memory. If a person's done wrong, the best thing he can do next is to say darned little about it.”
Kate rose and went off to bed. Another door had been barred to her, and she felt sick and faint.