“In the brown wrap, with the boot hose. Thee were coming to the church, by Fairthorn Gap; in the while I were coming by the Holly Hedge.”
For a minute the farmer paused; but the next he burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; peal after peal, each higher than the last. The poor woman had but one explanation for this phenomenon. She thought it a delirium; a lightening before death; and was beginning to wring her hands, and lament, when she was checked by the merry yeoman:
“Dame, thee bee’st a fool. It was I myself thee seed at the church porch. I seed thee, too; with a notice to quit upon thy face; but, thanks to God, thee bee’st a living; and that is more than I cared to say of thee this day ten-month!”
The dame made no answer. Her heart was too full to speak; but, throwing her arms round her husband, she showed that she shared in his sentiment. And from that hour, by practising a careful abstinence from offence, or a temperate sufferance of its appearance, they became the most united couple in the county. But it must be said, that their comfort was not complete till they had seen each other, in safety, over the perilous anniversary of St. Mark’s Eve.
* * * * *
The moral this story conveys is one which might prove a useful monitor to us all, if we could keep it in daily remembrance. Few, indeed, are so coarse in their manifestations of ill-temper as this Kentish couple are described; but we all indulge, more or less, in unreasonable fretfulness, and petty acts of selfishness, in the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters,—in fact, in all the relations of life. It would help us greatly to be kind, forbearing, and self-sacrificing toward neighbors, friends, and relatives, if it were always present to our minds that death may speedily close our intercourse with them in this world.—L. M. C.
WHAT THE OLD WOMAN SAID.
One summer eve, I chanced to pass, where, by the cottage gate,
An aged woman in the town sat crooning to her mate.