In another moment Liza was rolling up the sleeves of her gown, preparatory to the experimental exercise she had proposed to herself; but this was not a task that had the disadvantage of interrupting the flow of her gossip.

“But I say, lass,” she rattled on, “have you heard what that great gammerstang of a Mother Garth has been telling ’Becca Rudd about you?  ’Becca told me herself, and I says to ’Becca, says I, ’Don’t you believe it; it’s all a lie, for that old wizzent ninny bangs them all at lying; and that’s saying a deal, you know.  Besides,’ I says, ’what does it matter to her or to you, ’Becca, or to me, if so be that it is true, which I’m not for believing that it is, not I,’ I says.”

“But what was it, Liza?  You’ve not told me what it was, lass, that Mrs. Garth had said about me.”

Rotha had stopped churning, and was standing, with the color rising even closer round her eyes.  Luckily, Liza had no time to observe the minor manifestations of her friend’s uneasiness; she had taken hold of the “plunger,” and was squaring herself to her work.

“Say!” she cried; “why the old carlin will say aught in the world but her prayers—­she says that you’re settin’ your cap at one of these Rays boys; that’s about what she says the old witchwife, for she’s no better.  But it’s as I said to ’Becca Rudd, says I, ’If it is true what traffic is it of anybody’s; but it isn’t true,’ I says, ’and if it is, where’s the girl that has more right?  It can’t be Ralph that she’s settin’ her cap at, ‘Becca,’ I says, ’for Ralph’s gone, and mayhap never to come to these parts again the longest day he lives.’”

“Don’t say that, Liza,” interrupted Rotha in a hoarse voice.

“Why not?  Those redcoats are after him from Carlisle, arn’t they?”

“Don’t say he’ll not come back.  We scarce know what may happen.”

“Well, that’s what father says, anyway.  But, back or not back, it can’t be Ralph, I says to ’Becca.”

“There’s not a girl worthy of him, Liza; not a girl on the country side.  But we’ll not repeat their old wife’s gossip, eh, lass?”

“Not if you’re minded not to, Rotha.  But as to there being no girl worthy of Ralph,” said Liza, pausing in her work and lifting herself into an erect position with an air of as much dignity as a lady of her stature could assume, “I’m none so sure of that, you know.  He has a fine genty air, I will say; and someways you don’t feel the same to him when he comes by you as you do to other men, and he certainly is a great traveller; but to say that there isn’t a girl worthy of him, that’s like Nabob Johnny tellin’ Tibby Fowler that he never met the girl that wasn’t partial to him.”

Rotha did not quite realize the parallel that had commended itself to Liza’s quick perception, but she raised no objection to the sentiment, and would have shifted the subject.

“What about Robbie, my lass?” she said.