Betty then began gathering the tea-tackle, as she called it, together, and sung to herself—
“How hard is my fate, once I freedah enjied,
Andars happy as happy could be;
I was seized by the forces their fires to feed,
And captain for loss of the sea.”
“What is the meaning of that, Betty?” asked Thorsby.
“Meaning? It’s a song my mother used to sing,” said Betty, going on with her picking up cups and saucers, and giving them to Boddily to stow away in a basket, “to us children to get us to sleep, and I’ve cried my eyes out many a time, and gone to sleep sobbing, and dost think I don’t know th’ meaning on’t? Oh, it’s very cutting, is that owd song.”
“Well,” said Thorsby, “I have heard something like it, which I do understand;” and he sang—
“How hard is my fate, once I freedom enjoyed,
And was happy as happy could be;
I was seized by the foes their fiat to feel,
And was captive, alas! on the sea.”
“Oh, get out,” said Betty; “that’s the way such shallow pates takes the life out of things. Dost think I should iver have cried over such stuff as that? Why, that is as flat as ditch-water; there’s nothing cutting in it. Oh! but th’ owd song is cutting! It goes to the quick; it goes through bone and marrow. It makes cowd water seem to run down my back when I sing it sometimes o’er my house-work.”
Thorsby laughed, and Betty cast a most disdainful look at him.
“Here’s a man, now,” she said, “who goes walking with a stick and a dog, like a gentleman, and knows no better nor that! But I’ll fit thee, young man, I will!”
And here we may antedate our story to say that Betty did not forget to do it. The next morning when the family came downstairs at Woodburn Grange, where Thorsby stayed all night, they were all edified by seeing pinned up conspicuously on the staircase a memorandum of his which Betty had found—“To remember not to forget to send my trousers to be mended, ditto, boots.” Thorsby came the last of all into the breakfast-room, looking very hot, but when the next person went upstairs, the memorandum had disappeared.