THE BACHELOR'S DARLING.
On a fine summer's morning, a few years ago, two travellers were observed by the turnpike-woman, approaching along the high road, towards Bilberry Gate; both were on foot, and one of them led a very pretty poney, laden with two or three half-filled sacks, and an assortment of new and second-hand saucepans, ladles, and similar wares. As they advanced, the turnpike-woman amused herself, by picking up such crumbs of their discourse, as the distance between her and the interlocutors would permit; and by putting what she thus gleaned together, Dame Hetty discovered that they were strangers to each other;—the tinker's companion having scraped acquaintance with that worthy only a few minutes before, on the ground of their both being, apparently, journeying in the same direction. The tinker, she thought, was about thirty, or two-and-thirty years of age, at the utmost; he was a rough, thick-set fellow, of a middling size, with a loud voice and swaggering deportment His companion, Dame Hetty set down in her own mind as an Irishman, by his brogue;—he was, most likely, she thought, a beggar or a ballad-singer, or both, by his accoutrements; he had a wooden leg, a patch over his right eye, and the left sleeve of his ragged military jacket seemed to be empty. Hetty conjectured from these appearances that he might be an old soldier; but thought it was more probable that he had lost his limbs and eye by casualties not produced by war; and had assumed regimentals, as a striking costume for a maimed beggar or ballad-singer, although, perhaps, he had never smelt powder since he fired off penny cannons in his urchinhood.
These ideas came into Dame Hetty's head, without any solicitation on her part: she cared as little about the travellers as they did about her; but she looked at them and thought about them merely for want of a better subject, while she waited at the gate-side in expectation of the tinker's toll. When the two men and the poney arrived within a few yards of the turnpike, they turned suddenly to the right, and entered a lane which led towards a village a few miles off. The poney's tail had scarcely disappeared, when the dame entered the gate cottage, muttering that this was the fourth time she had been disappointed, early as it was in the day, by folks going down the lane instead of coming along the high road. “But, odd!” said she; “I mustn't expect every horse that comes in sight will pass the gate, when it's revel-day in the village. If there were a bar, now, put across the lane, as hath long been talked of, I should ha' caught the tinker's penny: but though he hath leave, my husband never will do't, that's certain;—a stupid toad! if 'tweren't for I, he wouldn't have a hole to put his head in; and much thanks I get! Lord! if I were but a man!”
While Dame Hetty was soliloquizing to the foregoing effect, the tinker and his companion proceeded at a quiet pace down the lane: the narrow road had a verdant margin on each side, of considerable breadth; it was broken into knolls in some parts, and here and there a hawthorn flourished, or a bramble sheltered a family of tall weeds: the thorns and briars bore evidence that sheep were occasionally permitted to pasture in the lane; a horse, with a huge log chained to one of his hind legs, to prevent him from roaming far, was quietly grazing on one side of the road; and nearly opposite him, a pig, wearing a collar, as an estoppel to his invading the fields, by creeping through their hedges, lay dozing on the other, near an old dung-heap that was nearly covered with “summer's green and flowery livery.”
The travellers had proceeded but a few paces down the lane, when they observed a thin stream of smoke rising from behind a large bush, which grew within a little distance of the right-hand hedge, and they immediately turned their steps across the turf towards it. On approaching nearer, they discovered a tall, lean man, in a plaid cloak, actively engaged in raking together the embers of a fire, and placing bits of dry wood upon a little blaze that shot up from its centre. “Is this a gipsy's old place, I wonder?” said the Irishman; “and is the pedlar, for so I take him to be, making it up to cook his breakfast?—God save ye kindly!” continued he, as he came within hearing of the man in the plaid coat.
“Whither awa', friend?” quoth the pedlar.
“Is it to the revel ye're budging, Sawney?”
“What would ye give to ken, Paddy?—And if I were ganging that gate, why for no, eh?—Ye seem to be cattle for that market yoursel'; wi' your bits o' ballads, and them scraps or fragments o' mortality ye've saved fra' the wars. Ye're some broken-down beggar, I doubt Sauf us a'! isn't it rare to see sic trash perk up to a travelling tradesman, and address an honest and respactable person wi' a plain 'Sawney?'—a mon, though I say it, whose bill for sax, ay, or aught pounds, in Bristol or Frome—”
“Aisy! aisy, man!” interrupted the other; “aisy, or we'll quarrel, I'm sure;—and when I quarrel, I fight; and it isn't before breakfast I like fighting:—everything's good in its season; so we won't fight now. As for your bill, though, I'll make bold to say this,—so I will, any how—as for your bill, I wouldn't give the worst ballad I have, for the best bill you or the likes o' ye ever made:—but don't let's be quarrelling, for all that.—Do you mark, though? if you cast any more dirt upon my person or my goods, I'll indorse that bill of yours, that sticks up betuxt your two eyes, in the place of a nose, with the fist that's left me. I'll engage, if I put my hand to it, it won't add much to its value, if you wished to raise money on it: but aisy, both of us; quarrelling does no good.”
“Come, come,—I like thee for that, comrade,” said the third traveller; “now that's nature;—so shake hands, both of'ee, lads.”