Then: "Us thought 'ee was going to ride down. Dad said as yu'd be sure tu."
"'Tisn't far to walk, Jimmy...."
"Us be tired."
Alack! I had done the wrong thing. Their little festivity, that was to have made them the envy of 'all they boys tu beach,' had fallen flat. They had expected to ride down 'like li'l gentry-boys.' However, we bought oranges, and then I was taken to see yesterday's fire, and was told how Tony had rushed into the blazing house to rescue a carpet 'an' didn' get nort for it.'
Tony himself came downstairs from putting away an hour in bed. "I'd ha' come up to meet 'ee," he said sleepily, "if anybody'd a reminded me o'it. Us an't done nort to the fishing since you went away."
"An' yu an't chopped up to-morrow morning's wude nuther!" added Mrs Widger.
Grannie Pinn came in at tea-time. We invited her to sit down and have a cup. "Do 'ee think I an't got nothing to eat at home?" she asked. "Well, I have, then!—Ay," she continued, bobbing her head sententiously, "yu got a mark in Seacombe, else yu wuden't be down yer again so sune. That's what 'tis—a mark! I knows, sure nuff. Come on! who be it now? What's her like, eh?"
She cannot understand how any young unmarried man can be without his sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and poverty-stricken....
"There! if I don't come round and box yer yers. Yu'm al'ays ready wi' yer chake."
A MARK