“Weel, weel, the lad has had a fair cargo intil him this voyage, anyway.”
There was obviously no likelihood of awakening Robbie, so with a world of difficulty, with infinite puffing and fuming and perspiring, and the help of a passing laborer, Reuben contrived to get the young fellow lifted bodily into his cart. Lying there at full length, a number of the empty thread sacks were thrown over the insensible man, and then Reuben mounted to his seat and drove off.
“Poor old Martha Anderson!” muttered Reuben to himself. “It's weel she's gone, poor body! It wad nigh have brocken her heart—and it's my belief 'at it did.”
They had not gone far before Reuben himself, with the inconsistency of more pretentious moralists, felt an impulse to indulge in that benign beverage of which he had just deplored the effects. Drawing up with this object at a public house that stood on the road, he called for a glass of hot spirits. He was in the act of taking it from the hands of the landlord, when a stage-coach drove up, and the coachman and two of the outside passengers ordered glasses of brandy.
“From Carlisle, eh?” said one of the latter, eyeing Reuben from where he sat and speaking with an accent which the little dalesman knew to be “foreign to these parts.”
Reuben assented with a satisfied nod and a screwing up of one cheek into a wrinkle about the eyes. He was thinking of the good luck of his visit.
“What's the news there?” asked the other passenger, with an accent which the little dalesman was equally certain was not foreign to these parts.
“Threed's up a gay penny!” said Reuben.
“Any news at the Castle the day?”
“The Castle? No—that's to say, yes. I did hear 'at a man had given hissel' up, but I know nowt aboot it.”