"'Tis about my Tommy, my Lady," said the woman curtseying. "Here, Tommy, come 'vor, and take off your hat to her Ladyship," and she pulled forward a frightened shrinking boy in a suit of corduroy, who had hidden himself behind her. "Look to mun, my Lady, he that was the most rompageous boy in Ashacombe, so quiet as a snail. And he can't spake, my Lady, he can't spake."
"Can't speak?" said Lady Eleanor.
"I can't make mun spake, my Lady. I don't know if your Ladyship was to try—"
"Why, Tommy," said Lady Eleanor, bending down towards the boy, in her sweet winning tones, "what's the matter with you? Come along and tell me, like a good boy."
The lad came forward, for no one could resist Lady Eleanor's smile, and opened his mouth confidently to speak; but he made only a few inarticulate sounds, and then thrust his knuckles into his eyes and began to cry.
"Come, come, don't be frightened. Try again," said Lady Eleanor kindly; but the boy only continued sobbing and remained speechless. Nor could all her endeavours succeed in making him utter a word.
"He must recover his speech presently," she said, much puzzled. "He has not lost the power of uttering sound."
"No, no, my Lady," said Mrs. Fry very confidently. "He can scream and holly loud enough. I bate mun last night, poor soul, because he wouldn't spake, and he scritched so loud that Mrs. Mugford come in, and asked me what I was 'bout killing a pig at that time o' night; though she knows very well that it was my pig that was drownded in the mill-leat back along in the spring. So I says to her, 'Mrs. Mugford,' I says, 'if those that talks about pigs would look to their own boys, they wouldn't run off to sea and come home with the shakums,' I says; 'and if they would keep their fowls from scratting about in their neighbours' gardens,' I says, 'they wouldn't run about crying for lost chimases.' For there's hardly a day but I drive her fowls from my garden, my Lady. And you mind her son, my Lady, him that went for a marine, and what terrible shakums he had when he comed back from the Injies. And I consider that they stolen chimases is a jidgment, my Lady, a jidgment for the mischief her fowls have done in my garden—"
"Stop, stop," said Lady Eleanor, whose eye had wandered to a shady spot under the trees where the Corporal was lunging a steady old Exmoor pony round and round, while Dick, with a pair of long gaiters added to his attire, sat firmly on its back, though without saddle or stirrups. "Tell me; has anything happened to the boy to frighten him?"
"Well, my Lady," answered Mrs. Fry, "I consider myself that the boy's overlooked."