“Come you here, woman,” he said in a mysterious voice, taking her by the elbow, “come down to the brookside till I speak a word wi’ you.”
“Oh! Mr. Bumpett,” she went on, “so ye’ve heard, have ye?”
“Sh——sh!” cried the Pig-driver, hurrying her along, “keep you quiet, I tell you, till we be away from the lane.”
The Digedi brook ran along the hollow near, and at a sheltered place by the brink he stopped. Both he and his companion were out of breath. The woman sat down upon a rock, her hard face working.
“Indeed, I be miserable upon the face of the earth,” she cried, “an I can’t think o’ nothing but Master Rhys from the time I get out o’ my bed until the time I do get in again, and long after that too. An’ there’s Mrs. Walters a-settin’ same as if he were there and sayin’ to me, ‘Never speak his name, Nannie, I have no son. Dead he have been to the Lord these many years, and now, dead he is to me. His brother’s blood crieth to him from the ground.’ I can’t abide they prayers o’ hers.”
“Will ye listen to me?” said Bumpett sharply. He gave as much notice to her lamentations as he did to the babble of the brook.
“Ah, she’s a hard one, for all her psalms and praises! Never a tear do I see on her face, and there’s me be like to break my heart when I so much as go nigh the tollet in the yard and see the young turkey-cock going by. Law! I do think o’ the smacks poor Master Rhys did fetch his grandfather, when he were a little bit of a boy, an’ how the old bird would run before him, same as if the black man o’ Hell was after him!”
She covered her face with her shawl. The Pig-driver was exasperated.
“Will ye hold yer tongue?” he said, thumping his stick on the ground, “or I won’t tell ye one blazin’ word of what I was to say. Here am I strivin’ to tell ye what ye don’t know about Mister Walters, an’ I can’t get my mind out along o’ you, ye old fool! Do ye hear me, Nannie Davis?”