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“Old Ursula once told me,” said Bridget, the youngest of the three, “that a gamekeeper is bound to kill a living thing every day of his life.”

“That he can do easy enough,” laughed Babbett, catching a gnat which had settled on her arm.

By this time the gamekeeper came quite near them. As if by a previous arrangement, they all began to sing again: they wished to pretend that they did not see the gamekeeper, but in their constraint they could not raise their voices, and only hummed the last verse of the song:–

“If she plays me false I will play her fair:
Three feathers upon my hat I wear;
And, as she will not have me stay,
I’ll travel forth upon my way.”

“Girls, how are you?” said the gamekeeper, standing still: “why don’t you sing louder?”

The girls began to giggle, and held their aprons to their mouths. Babbett found her tongue first, and said, “Thank you, mister, we are only singing for ourselves, and so we hear it if we sing ever so low: we don’t sing for other people.”

“Whisht!” said the gamekeeper: “the little tongue cuts like a sickle.”

“Sickle or straight, it’s as broad as it’s long; whoever don’t like it may talk to suit himself if he can,” replied Babbett. Tony jogged her, saying, half aloud, “You’re as rough as a hedgehog, you Babbett.”

“Oh, I can stand a joke as well as the next one,” said the gamekeeper, making the best of a bad job.

For all that, the girls were a good deal embarrassed, and did just the worst thing to put an end to it: they rose and took each others’ arms to go home.

“May I go with you, ladies?” said the gamekeeper again.

“It’s a high road and a wide road,” said Babbett.

The gamekeeper thought of getting away, but reflected that it would look ridiculous to let these girls bluff him off. He felt that he ought to pay Babbett in her own coin, but he could not: Tony, by whose side he walked, had “smitten” him so hard that he forgot all the jokes he ever knew, although he was not a bashful man by any means. So he left the saucy girl in the enjoyment of her fun and walked on in silence.

Just to mend matters a little, Tony asked, “Where are you going on Sunday?”

“To Horb,” said the gamekeeper; “and if the ladies would go with me I wouldn’t mind standing treat for a pint or two of the best.”

“We’re going home,” said Tony, blushing up to the eyes.

“We’d rather drink Adam’s ale,” said Babbett: “we get that for nothing too.”

At the first house of the village, Babbett again said, pointing to a footpath, “Mr. Gamekeeper, there’s a short cut for you goes round behind the village: that’s the nearest way to Horb.”

The gamekeeper’s patience was running out, and he had a wicked jibe on his lips; but, checking, himself, he only said, “I like to look an honest village and honest people in the face.” He could not refrain from turning his back on Babbett as he spoke.

The gamekeeper grew uncivil because he could not crack a joke,–a thing that happens frequently.

As they were entering the village, the gamekeeper asked Tony what her name was. Before she could answer, Babbett interposed, “Like her father’s.”

And when the gamekeeper retorted upon Babbett, “Why, you are mighty sharp to-day: how old are you?” he received the common answer, “As old as my little finger.”

Tony said, half aloud, “My name’s Tony. What makes you ask?”

“Because I want to know.”

‘When they had reached the top of the hill, at “Sour-Water Bat’s” house, the three girls stood still and laid their heads together. Suddenly, like frightened pigeons, they ran in different directions, and left the gamekeeper all alone on the road. He whistled to his dog, who had started in pursuit, put his left arm in his gun-strap, and went on his way.