“What have you seen, Betty?” asked Mrs. Woodburn. Betty didn’t seem in a hurry to answer; but when urged by all the family she said,
“Well, if you must know, we saw the shadder of th’ Owd Youth,”—a familiar name for the Devil in the midland counties,—“behind him in the pulpit as he were preaching. That was enough for us.”
“Nonsense,” said Ann, “it was merely some particular placing of the lights that cast an odd shadow. How absurd, Betty, about the Old Youth.”
“As you please, Miss,” said Betty; “I’ve my own notions; but I niver, in all my born days, expected to see Mr. Thorsby preaching in Hillmartin chapel, nor to hear Mr. Nockels the local preacher saying niver was such preaching. No, truly! William Penn’s ‘No Cross, no Crown,’ was not such stuff as they got every day at Hillmartin.”
“‘No Cross, no Crown,’” said Ann. “What makes you think it was ‘No Cross, No Crown?’”
“Sukey Priddo,” said Betty, “knows ‘No Cross, no Crown’ well enough. Mr. Heritage made her a present of it, and she’s read it through five times.”
With Betty Trapps’s opinion of Thorsby’s spiritual appearances, we may close this chapter, and leave the reader to think of it a little.
CHAPTER VIII.
WORSE AND WORSE WITH HARRY THORSBY.
One very hot, still July morning, before these just recorded occurrences, and nearly a year before Millicent Heritage’s eventful journey to London, Betty Trapps, who had been gathering peas in the garden, ran into the house with her checked apron flung over her head, and going puff! puff! this way and that, as if to blow something away. When asked what was the matter, she said, “It’s a harnet, as keen as mustard. It fled at me, and fled at me, like a big dumbledore.”