excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my
parishioners, "why do you make these ill-natured, irritating speeches to
your next-door neighbour?" "Oh, bless yer," was the reply I received, "I
only said 'em just to set old Sally on the _hig_." She knew that not to
many was it given to hear resignedly the bitter word, that not to many
was given in its reality the resignation affected by another of my old
women, who (one of those wretched combinations of religion and rancour,
"who think they're pious when they're only bilious") accosted me with
the startling intelligence--"Oh, Mestur 'Ole, I've got another lift
towards 'eaven. Bowcocks" (tenants of the cottage adjoining her own),
"Bowcocks has been telling more lies; blessed are the parsecuted!"
Better open war than this dismal affectation of peace! Better to confess
ourselves _hity-tity_, and to raise a _hullabaloo_, than such _humbug_
as this!

I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an
extract from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial
visitations.

_Pastor_.--"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door
just now?"

_Parishioner_.--"Oh yes, she wor' here not three minutes sin', and
_jabbering_, as usual, like a clamm'd [famished] jay in a wood; but when
she see your reverence coming up th' lane, th' old lass wor' gone in a
_jiffey_."

K makes no suggestions, and L but few. "I'll _lay_," has no reference to
eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I
was riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass,
with two grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at
a mounted horse in the distance before them and anxiously discussing his
identity. Just as I was passing the disputants, the one turned to the
other and said, "I shall _lay yer_ three threepenny gins to one as it's
Colonel's rat-tailed 'oss."

_Lig_ is still commonly used for "lie." "Our Bob has ligabed sin'
Monday." "The moon wor _ligging_ behind a cloud, so they couldn't see
keepers coming." To _lorp_ is to move awkwardly or idly, and the word
suggests a noble line for the alliterative poet:

Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.

In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process
of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into _Mouldi-warps_;
but I have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless
others, the bucolic brain was not so