“I wish, master, thee may live so long as I!”
The farmer, in his own mind, wished to live rather longer; for, at the utmost, he considered that his wife’s bill of mortality had but two months to run; the calculation made him sorrowful; during the last few months she had consulted his appetite, bent to his humor, and conformed her own inclinations to his, in a manner that could never be supplied.
His wife, from being at first useful to him, had become agreeable, and at last dear; and as he contemplated her approaching fate, he could not help thinking out audibly, “that he should be a lonesome man when she was gone.” The dame, this time, heard the survivorship foreboded without starting; but she marvelled much at what she thought the infatuation of a doomed man. So perfect was her faith in the infallibility of St. Mark, that she had even seen the symptoms of mortal disease, as palpable as plague-spots, on the devoted yeoman. Giving his body up, therefore, for lost, a strong sense of duty persuaded her that it was imperative on her, as a Christian, to warn the unsuspecting farmer of his dissolution. Accordingly, with a solemnity adapted to the subject, a tenderness of recent growth, and a memento mori face, she broached the matter in the following question:
“Master, how bee’st thee?”
“As hearty as a buck, dame; and I wish thee the like.”
A dead silence ensued; the farmer was as unprepared as ever. There is a great fancy for breaking the truth by dropping it gently; an experiment which has never answered, any more than with iron-stone china. The dame felt this; and, thinking it better to throw the news at her husband at once, she told him, in as many words, that he was a dead man.
It was now the yeoman’s turn to be staggered. By a parallel course of reasoning, he had just wrought himself up to a similar disclosure, and the dame’s death-warrant was just ready upon his tongue, when he met with his own despatch, signed, sealed, and delivered. Conscience instantly pointed out the oracle from which she had derived the omen.
“Thee hast watched, dame, at the church porch, then?”
“Ay, master.”
“And thee didst see me spirituously?”