Chapter IV
Mag’s Story
“LONG ago, aye, very long ago, it seems now, there was a girl with a temper so bad that no one could stand her ways.”
“Oh, lass,” interrupted her father, “don’t ye say that. Let me begin the story for thee.”
Then the old man took it up in the dialect of the miners, which to the readers of this would hardly seem like English, and for their benefit must be put into plainer language.
“Yes, there was a girl,” he began, “an’ the handsomest one ever I saw. Maybe she had somewhat of a temper, but no one could look into her face and think a bit blame for what she said. An’ what a voice she had! There was not a linnet could sing like her, an’ when all went straight she was singing all the time. There was no one to look after this girl, poor lammie, for the mother of her died before she had sense to miss her, an’ left her to the care of a foolish old father, who had small enough knowledge of the proper way to bring up a little lass. He took her down into the mine with him sometimes, but it wasn’t to her taste—the darkness fretted her, she wanted more liberty. If there had been a school at the place it would have been the making of her, for she had a quick mind, an’ it was a great worry to the father that she couldn’t be put to something fitting for a little lass; but he was near daft with the advising of one an’ another. One’s wife would be for having her sent to town to be put to a trade; another’s wife was for having her sent to learn service with some great lord’s housekeeper; an’ there wasn’t a man’s wife of them all but had some plan to drive him crazy with, an’ not one of them telling of a way that had a possibility in it, or that the girl took a liking to, for she’d fly out at all the ones that came advising. Not that she was a bad lass, if you took her fair, but wilful-like, an’, maybe, too quick with her tongue when she took a turn; but that was more the father’s fault, who had never taught her the right ways for a little lass.”
Philip did not find the story as interesting yet as some of the more exciting ones his grandfather told sometimes, of the three or four years he had been at sea when he ran away from home; but he listened patiently for what was to come, glancing anxiously at his mother, who still knelt in front of the fire, with her head bent low on her breast and her hands clasped in front of her. Philip had never seen her cry before, but now, to his surprise, great tears gathered in her mournful eyes, and once he was sure he heard a stifled sob; but the story began to grow more interesting then, and in listening he forgot to watch her.
“Ay, she was a rare lassie!” pursued the old man; “an’ when she was but just at her growth, an’ not half come to her strength, she saved the lives of two of the best men in the mines.”
“Oh, grandfather, how did she do that?” interrupted Philip.
“I can’t be telling ye the whole of it, because one story inside of another spoils the both to the taste; but I’ll give ye a notion of how it was,” resumed the old man.