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Rh little Tilly got the credit of having done all the courting. Even after marriage she had always done his share of the talking.

"Ow's ther kiddy maroo?" said Alick to Jim, lisping from the size of the plug he had just bitten. He had a fatherly interest in all Jyne's "rabbit ketchin'".

Jim, who never used his voice except to drive his bullocks, answered with a subterranean laugh.

"Noo bit er flesh," said Ned, nodding at the baby.

"Ow's Polly this mornin'?" gravely inquired Tilly, as she took a seat near Jyne.

"Ah, poor Polly," quavered Jyne's mother, and sparing Jyne by telling of Polly's untimely end.

"Well, I'm blest; what a lorse!" said the sympathetic Tilly. She repeated a well-known story of the bu'stin' of a poley cow last year.

Jyne took the baby, and began to rate the mother mildly for "walkin' seven mile ser soon", but Jyne's mother interposed with a recital of "wot I dun w'en Jun" (John) "wur two days old." John was present, fully six feet of him, grinning with a mouth bigger than Jyne's, but mercifully hidden by a straggled moustache.