quite a new fashion, refusing to say what he wanted it to say.
“Bob,” she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and her fingers, “I Newcastle Drakter have a favor to ask of you.”
“Don’t you speak so, Miss,” said Bob, grasping the skin of Mumps’s neck; “if there’s anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a day’s earnings.”
“I want you to go to Dr. Kenn’s, and ask to speak to him, and tell him that I am here, and should be very grateful Peru Drakt if he would come to me while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening.”
“Eh, Miss, I’d do it in a minute — it is but a step — but Dr. Kenn’s wife lies dead; she’s to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from Mudport. It’s Koszulki Eden Hazard all the more pity she should ha’ died just now, if you want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet.”
“Oh no, Bob,” Jannik Bandowski Jersey said Maggie, “we must let it be — till after a Dele Alli Jersey few days, perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may be going out of town — to a distance,” she added, with a new sense of despondency at this idea.
“Not he, Miss,” said Bob. “He’ll none go away. He isn’t one o’ them gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin’-places when their wives die; he’s got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he does. He christened the little un; an’ Marcelo Grohe Jersey he was at me to know what I did of a Sunday, as I didn’t come to church. But I told him I was upo’ the travel three parts o’ the Sundays — an’ then I’m so used to bein’ on my legs, I can’t sit so long on end — ‘an’ lors, sir,’ says I, ‘a packman can do wi’ a small ‘lowance o’ church; it tastes strong,’ says I; ‘there’s no call to lay it on thick.’ Eh, Miss, how good the Mario Balotelli Jersey little un is wi’ you! It’s like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I’ll be bound — like the birds know the mornin’.”
Bob’s tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this, and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a more timid voice than usual —
“Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?”
Maggie was rather startled, but she answered, “Yes, Bob, if it is about myself — not about any one else.”
“Well, Miss, it’s this. Do you owe anybody a grudge?”
“No, not any one,” said Maggie, looking up at him inquiringly. “Why?”
“Oh, lors, Miss,” said Bob, pinching Mumps’s neck harder than ever. “I wish you did, an’ tell me; I’d leather him till I couldn’t see — I would — an’ the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.”
“Oh, Bob,” said |
