Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/234

Betty Privett was as certain in her own mind that he did go ont aa she was of her own existence, and was little less certain that he did not return. She felt too digturbed to argue with him, and let the subject drop as though she muet have been mistaken. When she was walking down Longpuddle Street, later in the day, she met Jim Weedle’s daughter Naney, and said, ‘ Well, Nancy, you do look sleepy to-day !’

“Yes, Mrs. Privett,” says Nancy. “Now don’t tell anybody, but I don’t mind letting you know what the reason o't is. Last night being Old Midsummer Eve, some of us went to church porch, and didn’t get home till near one.’

"'Did ye? says Mrs. Privett. ‘Old Midsummer yesterday, was it? Faith, I didn’t think whe'r ’twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I'd too much work to do.”

“Yes. And we were frightened enough, I can tell ’ee, by what we saw.’

"'What did ye see?’

("You may not remember, sir, having gone off to foreign parts so young, that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death’s door within the year can be seeu entering the church. Those who get over their illness come out again after a while ; those that are doomed to die do not return.)

“'What did you see? asked William’s wife.

“Well,’ says Nancy, backwardly—' we needn’t tell what we saw, or who we saw.’

"'You saw my husband,’ says Betty Privett, in a quiet way.

"'Well, since you put it so,’ says Nancy, hanging fire, ‘we—thought we did see him; but it was darkish, and we was frightened, and of course it might not have been he.’

‘Nancy, you needn't mind letting it out, though