which she armed her reminiscence gave the verbs an
undue value, as if the aunts had intended actually to lock her in a
larder of hymn-books.

"I wish with all my heart they had done so," said Trewhella. "Better
that than the devil's palace of light where you belonged to dance. Oh, I
wish that Cockney were in Hell."

"I can't do more than ask him to go away, so don't keep on being rude
about my friends," said Jenny.

"Ess, and I wish now I'd never kicked up such a rig and frightened the
pair of 'ee. He was too quick. That's where it's to."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why, if I hadn't been so straight out, I might have trapped you both
fitty. If I'd waited and watched awhile."

Trewhella sighed regretfully.

"You are a sneak," said Jenny.

"Oh, I wish I could see your heart, missus. Look, I've never asked 'ee
this before. How many men have loved 'ee before I did?"

"Hundreds," said Jenny mockingly.

"Kissed 'ee?" shrieked Trewhella.

"Of course. Why not?"

Veins wrote themselves across his forehead, veins livid as the vipers of
Medusa.

"Witch," he groaned. "'Tis well I'm a saved man or I might murder 'ee.
Hark! hark! Murder 'ee, you Jezebel! I do know now what Jehu did feel
when he cried, 'Throw her down and call up they dogs and tear the whore
to pieces.'"

He ran from the room, raving.

After this new fit when the wolf drove out the fox, Trewhella settled
down to steady cunning. Jenny became conscious of being watched more
closely. Not even the orchard was safe. There was no tree trunk that
might not conceal a wormlike form, no white mound of sand that was not
alive with curiosity, no wind even that was not fraught with whispered
commentaries upon her simplest actions.

Bochyn could no longer have been endured without young Frank and May and
Granfa. These three could strip the most secretive landscape of terrors,
could heal the wildest imaginations. All the winter through, Trewhella
never relaxed his efforts to trip her up over her relations with
Castleton, and compel an admission of the bygone love-affair that would
not necessarily, as he pointed out, involve her in a present intrigue.

"How did 'ee send him away, if there was nothing at all?"

"Because I'm ashamed for any of my friends to see what sort of a man
I've married. That's why."

"I'll catch 'ee out one day," vowed Trewhella. "You do think I'm just a
fool, but I'm more, missus; I'm brae cunning. I can snare a wild thing
wi' any