“Oh, no, to crusty old 'Becca down the road. How much do you love me?”
Robbie's passion was curiously mathematical.
“Me? How much? About as much as you might put in your eye.”
Robbie pretended to look deeply depressed. He dropped his head, but kept, nevertheless, an artful look out of the corner of the eye which was alleged to be the measure of his sweetheart's affection.
Thinking herself no longer under the fire of Robbie's glances, Liza's affectation of stern disdain melted into a look of tenderness.
Robbie jerked his head up sharply. The little woman was caught. She revenged herself by assuming a haughty coldness. But it was of no use. Robbie laughed and crowed and bantered.
At this juncture Mattha Branth'et came into the cottage.
The weaver was obviously in a state of profound agitation. He had just had a “fratch” with the Quaker preachers on the subject of election.
“I rub't 'm t' wrang way o' t' hair,” said the old man, “when I axt 'em what for they were going aboot preaching if it were all settled aforehand who was to be damned and who was to be saved. 'Ye'r a child of the devil,' says one. 'Mebbee so,' says I, 'and I dunnet know if the devil iver had any other relations; but if so, mebbee yersel's his awn cousin.'”
It was hard on Matthew that, after upholding Quakerism for years against the sneers of the Reverend Nicholas Stevens, he should be thus disowned and discredited by the brotherhood itself.