"Oh, Mo, don'tee say that! It was only his make-believe to frighten me. Anyone could tell that only to see him flourishin' out his knife."
"Hay—what's that?—his knife? You never told me o' that."
"Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce."
"What was it about his knife?"
"Just this, Mo dear! Now, don't you be excited. He says to me again:—'What are you good for, Polly Daverill?' And then I see he was handling a big knife with a buckhorn handle." M'riar was tremulous and tearful. "Oh, Mo!" she said. "Do consider! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance word. He ain't so bad as you think of him. He was only showin' off like, to get the most he could."
"That's a queer way of showin' off—with a knife! P'r'aps it warn't open, though?" But it was, by M'riar's silence. "Anyways," Mo continued, "he won't come back so long as he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have this sort o' thing goin' on!"
M'riar's lighting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she:—"You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it, Mo!" And then, in reply to the natural question:—"Think what?" she continued:—"A woman's husband ain't like any other man. She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it was.... It makes one creep to think...." She stopped abruptly, and shuddered.
"What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an end for the sentence, gravely.
"Ah!—he might be.... What would it be, Mo, if he was tried and found guilty?"
"Without a recommendation to mercy? It was a capital offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it?"