‘What! and not know the name of the post-town?’ said I, out of patience. ‘How on earth do you propose to manage that?’
‘La you there, good master. What need you frighten a poor girl that is no schollard, bating what she learned at the Charity School of Saint Bees?’
‘Is Saint Bees far from this place, Dorcas? Do you send your letters there?’ said I, in a manner as insinuating, and yet careless, as I could assume.
‘Saint Bees! La, who but a madman—begging your honour’s pardon—it’s a matter of twenty years since fader lived at Saint Bees, which is twenty, or forty, or I dunna know not how many miles from this part, to the West, on the coast side; and I would not have left Saint Bees, but that fader’—
‘Oh, the devil take your father!’ replied I.
To which she answered, ‘Nay, but thof your honour be a little how-come-so, you shouldn’t damn folk’s faders; and I won’t stand to it, for one.’
‘Oh, I beg you a thousand pardons—I wish your father no ill in the world—he was a very honest man in his way.’
‘WAS an honest man!’ she exclaimed; for the Cumbrians are, it would seem, like their neighbours the Scotch, ticklish on the point of ancestry,—‘He IS a very honest man as ever led nag with halter on head to Staneshaw Bank Fair. Honest! He is a horse-couper.’
‘Right, right,’ I replied; ‘I know it—I have heard of your father-as honest as any horse-couper of them all. Why, Dorcas, I mean to buy a horse of him.’
‘Ah, your honour,’ sighed Dorcas, ‘he is the man to serve your honour well—if ever you should get round again—or thof you were a bit off the hooks, he would no more cheat you than’—