Page:That Lass o' Lowrie's.djvu/145

Rh owd lass." His sympathy for the good woman was not of a sentimental order, but it was sympathy nevertheless. He had been a good husband, if not an effusive one. "Th' owd lass" had known her only rival in The Crown and his boon companions; and upon the whole, neither had interfered with her comfort, though it was her habit and her pleasure to be loud in her condemnation and disparagement of both. She would not have felt her connubial life complete without a grievance, and Sammy's tendency to talk politics over his pipe and beer was her standard resource.

When he went out, he had left her lying down in the depths of despair, but when he entered the house, he found her up and dressed, seated by the window in the sun, a bunch of bright flowers before her.

"Well now!" he exclaimed. "Tha nivver says! What's takken thee? I thowt tha wur bedrid fur th' rest o' thy days."

"Howd thy tongue," she answered with a proper touch of wifely irritation at his levity. "I've had a bit o' company an' it's chirked me up summat. That little lass o' th' owd parson has been settin wi' me."

"That's it, is it?"

"Aye, an' I tell yo' Sammy, she's a noice little wench. Why, she's getten th' ways o' a woman, stead o' a lass,—she's that theer quoiet an' steady, an' she's getten a face as pretty as her ways, too."

Sammy scratched his head and reflected.

"I mak' no doubt on it," he answered. "I mak' no doubt on it. It wur her, tha knows, as settlet th' foight betwixt th' lads an' th' dog. I'm wonderin' why she has na been here afore."

"Well now!" taking up a stitch in her knitting, "that's th' queer part o' it. Whatten yo' think th' little