“Ah! Miss Letty, beware! beware!” said Betty, looking very serious. “I say not to your young fluttering heart more, nor to any one else. I see a great candle and a little, pretty, very pretty moth, a-flying round it. If it burns its wings, then it won’t be the fault of Betty Trapps.”
Letty laughed outright. “Why, Betty, you are growing prophetic; but what about the cockatrices? I have often heard of such nondescripts, but I never saw one yet.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Betty. “If you have not I wish you never may. But as to this Thorsby, he crows when he laughs. He crows and chuckles, and shakes those black locks of his. Oh! he is too full of wild fire by half. See if it dunna run clean away with him one of these days.
“‘A crowing hen and crowing men,
Twist off their heads and sleep again.’”
“Betty!” said Ann, “what do you mean with your superstitious rhymes? Would you twist off Mr. Thorsby’s head?”
“Oh no!” said Betty. “I would not twist off his head; I’d only turn it hind before, that when he thought he was coming here he might be going somewhere else. I would not trust him or his head. I only mean that crowing hens and crowing men are out of natur. There’s no sureness of ’em. Mark! I don’t say there’s any guillery in this young man; but he’s no stop in him.”
“Well,” said the young ladies, “we hope you and Mr. Thorsby will become better friends as you get to know one another better. He thinks very much of you, Betty.”
Betty shook her head. “I’ve said my say,” she rejoined. “What must be, must be. It’s none of my doings nor shapings. Pray God all come out right.”
Thorsby was always very affable and very pleasantly jocose with Betty. Of course, he was not apprised of her unfavourable idea of him; but he saw that she did not willingly converse with him, but then he knew that she was reckoned an oddity, and he thought it her way. As time went on Betty seemed to soften down a little. He frequently offered her money when he had been staying there; but she would never take it. “It is for the trouble I give it you, Betty,” said Thorsby.
“You give me no trouble,” answered Betty. “I have just the same to cook and to do whether you are here or aren’t here. You can give it to Thomasin”—the other maid.