“The cider went up my nose!” cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak; “and now ’tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!”
“The poor lad’s cough is terrible unfortunate,” said Matthew Moon. “And a great history on hand, too. Bump his back, shepherd.”
“’Tis my nater,” mourned Cain. “Mother says I always was so excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!”
“True, true,” said Joseph Poorgrass. “The Balls were always a very excitable family. I knowed the boy’s grandfather—a truly nervous and modest man, even to genteel refinery. ’Twas blush, blush with him, almost as much as ’tis with me—not but that ’tis a fault in me!”
“Not at all, Master Poorgrass,” said Coggan. “’Tis a very noble quality in ye.”
“Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad—nothing at all,” murmured Poorgrass, diffidently. “But we be born to things—that’s true. Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts.... But under your bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with ’ee! A strange desire, neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due. Yet there is a Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and certain meek men may be named therein.”
“Cainy’s grandfather was a very clever man,” said Matthew Moon. “Invented a’ apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his name to this day—the Early Ball. You know ’em, Jan? A Quarrenden grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o’ that again. ’Tis trew ’a used to bide about in a public-house wi’ a ’ooman in a way he had no business to by rights, but there—’a were a clever man in the sense of the term.”
“Now then,” said Gabriel, impatiently, “what did you see, Cain?”
“I seed our mis’ess go into a sort of a park place, where there’s seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer,” continued Cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very effective as regarded Gabriel’s emotions. “And I think the sojer was Sergeant Troy. And they sat there together for more than half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a’most to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was as white as a lily; and they looked into one another’s faces, as far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be.”
Gabriel’s features seemed to get thinner. “Well, what did you see besides?”