‘Yes, of course,’ said Stockdale. ‘No wonder you had permission to broach the tubs—they were his, I suppose?’
‘No, they were not—they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure, and sold very well.’
At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy’s house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.
‘Mrs. Newberry, isn’t it?’ he said hastily.
‘Yes, Jim,’ said she. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I find that we can’t put any in Badger’s Clump to-night, Lizzy,’ said Owlett. ‘The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the orchet if there’s time. We can’t put any more under the church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is safe.’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Be quick about it—that’s all. What can I do?’
‘Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!—you two that can’t do anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.’
While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and so free from lover’s jealousy, the men who followed him had been descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them being stove in by the blow.
‘’Od drown it all!’ said Owlett, rushing back.