Old Michael’s mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn’t know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter’s wife to correct him.

“Well, now,” said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, “that sort o’ coarse touch that’s so upsetting to Ann’s feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true.  And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral.  My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon’t.  If the story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories, who’d ha’ troubled to invent parables?” Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home-made wines.

Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband’s back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both):  “Such a man as Dewy is!  Nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable.  And did you ever hear too—­just now at supper-time—­talking about ‘taties’ with Michael in such a work-folk way.  Well, ’tis what I was never brought up to!  With our family ’twas never less than ‘taters,’ and very often ‘pertatoes’ outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we.”

The hour of parting came.  Fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her.  She disappeared temporarily from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been hitherto, in fact (to Dick’s sadness and disappointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament—­nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of Dick’s hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe.

“What a difference!” thought the young man—­hoary cynic pro tem.  “What a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid’s life at dancing times and at others!  Look at this lovely Fancy!  Through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable—­even kissable!  For whole half-hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in it.  A flit is made upstairs—­a hat and a cloak put on—­and I no more dare to touch her than—­” Thought failed him, and he returned to realities.