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“The jezebel!” commented Sam.

“You may say it; but wait, my man, just wait. Another cup of beer? We can’t go back to church until this humbugging rain have stopped.”

“No, that we can’t.”

“It’s my belief the ‘bugging rain won’t stop this side of four.”

“And if the roof don’t hold it off it ‘ull spoil the Lord’s Commandments that’s just done up on the chancel front.”

“Oh, they be dry by now,” spoke Bob reassuringly and then continued his tale.”‘I’l
l marry Agnes or I won’t marry nobody’—William says—and they couldn’t budge him. No, old Harry cracked on, but he wouldn’t have it, and at last Harry says: ‘It’s like this.’ He pulls a half-crown out of his pocket and ‘Heads it’s Agnes,’ he says, ‘or tails it’s Edith,’ he says.”

“Never! Ha! ha!” cried Sam.

“Heads it’s Agnes, tails it’s Edie, so help me God. And it come down Agnes, yes, heads it was—Agnes—and so there they were.”

“And they lived happy ever after?”

“Happy! You don’t know your human nature, Sam; wherever was you brought up? ‘Heads it’s Agnes,’ said old Harry, and at that Agnes flung her arms round William’s neck and was for going off with him then and there, ha! But this is how it happened about that. William hadn’t any kindred, he was a lodger in the village, and his landlady wouldn’t have him in her house one mortal hour when she heard all of it; give him the right-about there and then. He couldn’t get lodgings anywhere else, nobody would have anything to do with him, so of course, for safety’s sake, old Harry had to take him, and there they all lived together at The British Oak—all in one happy family. But they girls couldn’t bide the sight of each other, so their father cleaned up an old outhouse in his yard that was used for carts and hens and put William and his Agnes out in it. And there they had to bide. They had a couple of chairs, a sofa, and a bed and that kind of thing, and the young one made it quite snug.”

“‘Twas a hard thing for that other, that Edie, Bob.”

“It was hard, Sam, in a way, and all this was happening just afore I met her in the carrier’s van. She was very sad and solemn then; a pretty girl, one you could like. Ah, you may choke me, but there they lived together. Edie never opened her lips to either of them again, and her father sided with her, too. What was worse, it came out after the marriage that Agnes was quite free of trouble—it was only a trumped-up game between her and this William because he fancied her better than the other one. And they never had no child, them two, though when poor Edie’s mischance come along I be damned if Agnes weren’t fonder of it than its own mother, a jolly sight more fonder, and William—he fair worshipped it.”

“You don’t say!”

“I do.’Twas a rum go, that, and Agnes worshipped it, a fact, can prove it by scores o’ people to this day, scores, in them parts. William and Agnes worshipped it, and Edie—she just looked on, long of it all, in the same house with them, though she never opened her lips again to her young sister to the day of her death.”

“Ah, she died? Well, it’s the only way out of such a tangle, poor woman.”

“You’re sympathizing with the wrong party.” Bob filled his pipe again from the brass box; he ignited it with deliberation; going to the open window he spat into a puddle in the road.”The wrong party, Sam; ’twas Agnes that died. She was found on the sofa one morning stone dead, dead as a adder.”