"I'll tell yer," said Peter. "'Umbug it may be; an' truck it may be; but there's things as is best let alone, and that I do think. Thur ain't no kind o' weak-mindyness nor credibility about me; but I says, wot's the objeck o' goin' a-spillin' o' salt, an' crossin' knives, an' settin' down thirteen?"
"MIGHTY QUEER ABOUT THIS 'ERE PIG O' MINE."
"Ar!" said Billet, eagerly, "that's wot I ses—let sleepin' dogs lie, ses I; and then yer won't git bitten, I ses!"
"I've got a kind o' notion as things are a-going somehow queerish like," said Armstrong, passing along the lane at that moment. "Do me if I can git the wind right way round into the mill-sails this mornin' nor yet yesterday; and what on earth shed make that there lot o' flour mouldy—well! That there pig's tail o' yourn don't look kind o' right—it's a-hangin' out straight as a dip. Wot's ailin'?"
Peter and Billet looked at each other and shook their heads. Then Joe Maydew came along, and told how he had his doubts about them turkeys of his being quite as they should be, and how Jem Baker the carrier's horse had gone lame the day before; and how other suspicious things were happening.
Now, as a fact, Peter's pig had been ailing over a week, and the mill had been refractory for five or six days—ever since the wind had been so choppy; and Baker's horse had gradually gone lame from a shoe-nail badly driven ten days previously. But the "Club" had not been nervously looking out for evil signs until some thirty hours ago, and so had failed to find any particular significance in the mishaps.
"It strikes me," said Maydew (one of the Unbelievers' Club), "that there's folks as is fools and folks as is bigger fools; and these 'ere last kind is them as must go a-sneerin', and unb'leevin', and defyin', and temptin' o' Providence. Wot's Providence provide bad luck for, if you ain't free to 'elp yerself to it? An' how are yer goin' to 'elp yerself to it if ther' ain't no proper reckernized means o' doing of it—hey?"
"Do jest seem like throwin' away the gifts o' Providence, don't it?" said Peter.
"And wot I ses, them as up and persuades others for to do that same, though bein' nameless, is got to answer to it," said Billet. "There's things as we knows about, and there's other things, as contrariwise, we don't; and when you ses unluck, and ghostes, and sech ——."