The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
Fleetwood in days of yore, and was his right hand now. Simon, indeed, esteemed every
one about the place with one exception: he had no opinion whatever of Jane. Jane was
the "lass" who did odd jobs about the house, and attended to Simon's personal toilet. It
was she who dressed his hair in ringlets under Mrs. Fleetwood's supervision, who
fastened his starched frill so very tightly about his round little pillar of a throat, who
scolded him when he drew patterns with his chubby forefinger on his velvet tunic, and
who sewed up his pockets at the top so that he could not put anything inside. Moreover,
she related "boggart" tales which made him feel very uncomfortable when she took
away the candle, though he scorned to
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admit that he was afraid. Besides on one occasion he had heard her tell an untruth, from
which moment he had looked on her with a certain horror, considering her foredoomed
to perdition. It really weighed upon him to think that Jane could have been guilty of so
wicked and so disgraceful an act. He was quite relieved when, a few weeks after this
lapse from the path of righteousness, she evinced tokens of repentance.
He was walking home from church one hot Sunday, his broad, dimpled hand firmly
clasped in Jane's — to his intense discomfort, for he loathed that hard, hot, heavy hand
of hers — endeavouring to beguile the tedium of the way by listening to her
conversation to a friend.
Jane was speaking in a particularly dolorous tone, and every now and then the hot
fingers aforesaid gave a convulsive twitch.
"It's all my own fault, it is that," said Jane. "If I hadn't have been so 'ard like he'd never
have thought on sich a thing."
“Well, I allus did say, thou knows, as 'twas downright cruel to sarve him that gate,"
returned the friend, "and theer it is, thou sees, theer it is. He's gone an' ‘listed six months
to the very day arter thee an' him fell out."
"Ah," resumed Jane lugubriously, "it shows plain, dunnot it, why he did it? I blame
myself — that I do."
"Well, what's ended cannot be mended," said the other. "Theer's no use cryin’ ower spilt
milk. I wouldn't give way if I were thee — I wouldn't indeed."