“You see,” said old William, hastening to explain, “I was scared to find the bottom gie way—what should I know o’ spring bottoms?—and thought I had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man’s chair, I didn’t wish any such thing.”
“And, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d’see his own father sitting in his enemy’s easy-chair, and a poor chap like Leaf made the best of, as if he almost had brains—why, it knocks all the wind out of his sail at once: it did out of mine.”
“If that young figure of fun—Fance Day, I mean,” said Bowman, “hadn’t been so mighty forward wi’ showing herself off to Shiner and Dick and the rest, ’tis my belief we should never ha’ left the gallery.”
“’Tis my belief that though Shiner fired the bullets, the parson made ’em,” said Mr. Penny. “My wife sticks to it that he’s in love wi’ her.”
“That’s a thing we shall never know. I can’t onriddle her, nohow.”
“Thou’st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she,” the tranter observed.
“The littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. And coming of such a stock, too, she may well be a twister.”
“Yes; Geoffrey Day is a clever man if ever there was one. Never says anything: not he.”
“Never.”
“You might live wi’ that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him.”