"Say not so," pleaded Mercy: "to be sure he hath the heart, but not the means. 'T was but yestreen he bade me sell his jewels for you. But, mother, I think they belonged to some one he loved,—and she died. So, poor thing, how could I? Then, if you love me, blame me, and not him."
"Jewels, quotha! will they stop such a gap as ours?" was the contemptuous reply.
From complaining of him behind his back, the old people soon came to launching innuendoes obliquely at him. Here is one specimen out of a dozen.
"Wife, if our Mercy had wedded one of her own sort, mayhap he'd have helped us a bit."
"Ay, poor soul; and she so near her time: if the bailiffs come down on us next month, 'tis my belief we shall lose her, as well as house and home."
The false Thomas Leicester let them run on, in dogged silence; but every word was a stab.
And one day, when he had been baited sore with hints, he turned round on them fiercely, and said: "Did I get you into this mess? It's all your own doing. Learn to see your own faults, and not be so hard on one that has been the best servant you ever had, gentleman or not."
Men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them, better than they can those gentle appeals that rouse no anger, but soften the whole heart. The old people stung him; but Mercy, without design, took a surer way. She never said a word; but sometimes, when the discussions were at their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him, with a look so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that his heart melted within him.
Ah, that is a true touch of nature and genuine observation of the sexes, in the old song,—
"My feyther urged me sair;
My mither didna speak;
But she looked me in the face,
Till my hairt was like to break."