In time, if it had gone on, the neighbours would doubtless have had
plenty to say on the subject, for old wives' tongues rattled fast of a
winter's evening, when they all gathered in this house or that, and sat
on the sides of the green bed with their feet in the dry fern inside,
and the oil crasset hanging down in the midst, and plied their needles
and their tongues and wits all at once, and wrought scandalously good
guernseys and stockings in spite of it all.
But these were summer evenings yet, and the _veilles_ had not begun, and
reputations were out at grass till the time came round for their
inspection and judgment.
And so, when Peter Mauger never reached home the night before this day
of which we are telling, his old housekeeper, whatever she thought about
it at the time, only said afterwards that she supposed he had stopped
somewhere and would turn up all right in the morning, though she
admitted that he was not in the habit of staying out of a night. Anyway,
she was an old woman and all alone, and she was not going out to look
for him at that time of night.
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