Fry, "I consider myself that the boy's
overlooked."
"Overlooked?" said Lady Eleanor.
"Yes, my Lady. For they do tell me that the woman that comed through
the village yesterday with the mazed body told my Tommy, 'You don't
spake again,' she says, 'till I tell 'ee.'"
"Oh! nonsense," said Lady Eleanor, "don't think of such stuff."
"But she _did_," persisted Mrs. Fry, "and sure enough the boy can't
spake. She's overlooked mun! she's awitched mun, you may depend, my
Lady. And I'm sure if you'd a known who they two was, you wouldn't
never have let mun go. She's the old witch to Cossacombe, that's what
she is, though she a'nt never been this way afore, and the man's as bad
as she is, I'll be bound, though I never heard tell of he afore."
"Why, it was easy to see that he was but a poor half-witted creature,"
said Lady Eleanor, "as harmless as a child; his mother told me that she
hardly let him out of her sight."
"Well, my Lady, 'tis all very well to say that the man's mazed,"
answered Mrs. Fry almost forgetting her manners in her excitement, "but
what took mun down among the boys? Why, to take the ale from them!
And what is ales but sarpints, my Lady?" said Mrs. Fry throwing out her
hands, "and what makes the man so friendly with sarpints, that he must
come to save mun? _We_ know, do you and I, my Lady, who is the old
sarpint and the father of sarpints.
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