“By gum, missus, I doubt it’s on the way to hell,” he made answer.
They were like folk wrestling, but we did not know their quarrel.
“Oh, I be glad it’s you that’s to weave my wedding linen, and not the
ugly hired man,” said Jancis.
“So you’re to be wed, child?”
“Ah. To Gideon Sarn, sir. Dun you know Gideon?”
“I’ve heard tell of him.”
I wondered what he’d heard of Gideon. All in a minute it was more to me
that he should like Gideon and Mother and me than that I should master
the reading of Revelations, which beat me still, because of the strange
words and the roundabout way of the telling. I’d laboured over it a long
while, and labour brings a thing near the heart’s core. Above and beyond
that, I wanted to know the mind of John, he being lonesome on his bylet
in the sea as we were at Sarn, and having many thoughts in his mind,
both deep and bright. Now one like Tivvy had no thoughts at all, and you
soon tire of looking in an empty porringer. And Mother had two thoughts
or three, and Gideon two. So the mind of John had drawn me as none other
did afore; but now the book of Revelations was but a windle-straw to
this man’s whim.
“Oh, Mister Woodseaves, will you come to my wedding if Prue writes you a
bidding-letter?” asked Jancis.
“Maybe I ool,” he made answer, looking at her mother as much as to say
that she could give him the go-by if she would. “And who’s Prue, that
can write bidding-letters?”
I was in a swelter, but just as Jancis was going to rush on me and drag
me out of hiding, Sukey and Moll, who could never be quiet for long,
burst out—
“Please, mister, ool you come to our weddings too?”
Then they giggled mightily, and put their heads together, shaking their
curls and bending their long necks. Then they put their hands afore
their mouths and ran across the kitchen to him, and one whispered in
this ear and one whispered in that, and then they ran back, to their
bench, two-double with laughter. Jancis, being near, heard Sukey
whisper, “I’d lief you were bridegroom!” I hoped their mother wouldna
get to know, and slipper them again, for they’d saved me from being
seen. I couldna bear that he should see me, for fear of a cold look, or
scorn. I’d liefer stay down-under, like the daffadily, lest the weather
be winterly. For if she too eagerly comes up, desirous of the sun, she
can but stand and shudder in the bitter frost, torn by the fangs of the
winds. So she has lost her warmship, and yet hanna won through to
summer.
“Sir! Be you wed?” asked Felena, and her voice was pretty and slippery
like a grass snake.
“Why, no to that, missus.”
“Nor handfasted?”
“I’m thinking you were an attorney once,” he says, “and stuck questions
into poor men like skewers before you put ’em out of their misery.”