“No-o-o, but something’s a-goin to.” And the child raised her head for a louder scream, and let it drop again with a thud on the ground.
“What’s going to happen to her? Tell me, there’s a good child,” coaxed Franceline, crouching down beside the little, prostrate figure, and trying to make it look up. “If it hasn’t happened, perhaps it will never happen. I might prevent it, or somebody else might.”
A dim ray of consolation apparently dawned out of this hypothesis on Bessy’s mind; she lifted her head, and, after suppressing her sobs, exclaimed: “Mammy’s a-goin’ to be damned, she is!”
“Good gracious, child, what a dreadful thing for you to say!” exclaimed Franceline, too much shocked by the announcement to catch the comical side of it at once. “Who put such a naughty thing into your head?”
“It’s Farmer Griggs as said it. He says as how he knows mammy’s a-goin’ to be damned!” And the sound of her own words was so dreadful that it sent Bessy into a fresh paroxysm, and she shrieked louder than before.
“He’s a wicked man, and you mustn’t mind him,” said Franceline; “he knows nothing about it!”
“Ye-e-es he does!” insisted Bessy. “He-e-s not wicked; … he prea-a-a-ches every Sunday at the cha-a-a-pel, he does.”
“Then he preaches very wicked sermons, I’m sure,” said Franceline, who saw an argument on the wrong side for Farmer Griggs’ sanctity in this evidence. “You must leave off crying and not mind him.”
But Bessy was not to be comforted by this negative suggestion. She went on crying passionately, until Franceline, finding that neither scolding nor coaxing had the desired effect, threatened to tell Miss Bulpit, and have her left out from the next tea and cake feast; whereupon Bessy brightened up with extraordinary alacrity, gathered up her books and her dry bread and apple, and proceeded to trot along by the side of Franceline, who soothed her still further by the promise of a piece of bread and jam from Angélique, if she gave up crying altogether and told her all about mammy and Farmer Griggs. An occasional sob showed every now and then that the waters had not quite subsided; but Bessy did her best, and before they reached The Lilies she had given in somewhat disjointed sentences the following history of the prophecy and what led to it. The widow Bing—who, for motives independent of all theological views, had recently joined the Methodist Connection, of which Farmer Griggs was a burning and shining light—had been laid up for the last month with the rheumatism, and consequently unable to attend the meeting; but last Sunday, being a good deal better, though still unequal to toiling up-hill to the chapel, which was nearly half an hour’s walk from her cottage, she had compromised matters by going to church, which was within ten minutes’ walk of her. This scandal spread quickly through the Connection, and was not long coming to Farmer Griggs’ ears, who straightway declared that the widow Bing had thrown in her lot with the transgressors, and was henceforth a castaway whose name should be blotted out. This fearful doom impending over her mother had just been made known to Bessy by Farmer Griggs’ boy, who met her tripping along with her basket on her arm, and singing to herself as she went. The sight of the child’s gayety under such appalling circumstances was not a thing to be tolerated; so he conveyed to Bessy in very comprehensible vernacular the soothing intelligence that her mother was “a bad ’un as was gone over to the parson, as means the devil, and how as folk as was too lazy to come to chapel ’ud find it ’arder a-goin’ down to the bottomless pit, where there was devils and snakes and all manner o’ dreadful things a-blazin’ and a-burnin’ like anythink!”
All this Franceline contrived to elicit from Bessy by the time they reached The Lilies, where they found Miss Merrywig sitting outside the kitchen-window in high confabulation with Angélique, busy inside at her work. The day was intensely hot, and the sun was still high enough to make shade a necessity of existence for everybody except cats and bees; but there sat Miss Merrywig under the scorching glare, with a large chinchilla muff in her lap.