“Whew!” said I, knowing something of London, and sorry for Benita’s chance.

“So the poor thing was compelled to drop all thought of Apulia, and settle down on the brink of Exmoor, where you get all its evils, without the good to balance them.  She married a man who turned a wheel for making the blue Watchett ware, partly because he could give her a house, and partly because he proved himself a good soul towards my Lady.  There they are, and have three children; and there you may go and visit them.”

“I understand all that, Jeremy, though you do tell things too quickly, and I would rather have John Fry’s style; for he leaves one time for his words to melt.  Now for my second question.  What became of the little maid?”

“You great oaf!” cried Jeremy Stickles:  “you are rather more likely to know, I should think, than any one else in all the kingdoms.”

“If I knew, I should not ask you.  Jeremy Stickles, do try to be neither conceited nor thick-headed.”

“I will when you are neither,” answered Master Jeremy; “but you occupy all the room, John.  No one else can get in with you there.”

“Very well then, let me out.  Take me down in both ways.”

“If ever you were taken down; you must have your double joints ready now.  And yet in other ways you will be as proud and set up as Lucifer.  As certain sure as I stand here, that little maid is Lorna Doone.”

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CHAPTER LIV

MUTUAL DISCOMFITURE

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It must not be supposed that I was altogether so thick-headed as Jeremy would have made me out.  But it is part of my character that I like other people to think me slow, and to labour hard to enlighten me, while all the time I can say to myself, “This man is shallower than I am; it is pleasant to see his shoals come up while he is sounding mine so!” Not that I would so behave, God forbid, with anybody (be it man or woman) who in simple heart approached me, with no gauge of intellect.  But when the upper hand is taken, upon the faith of one’s patience, by a man of even smaller wits (not that Jeremy was that, neither could he have lived to be thought so), why, it naturally happens, that we knuckle under, with an ounce of indignation.

Jeremy’s tale would have moved me greatly both with sorrow and anger, even without my guess at first, and now my firm belief, that the child of those unlucky parents was indeed my Lorna.  And as I thought of the lady’s troubles, and her faith in Providence, and her cruel, childless death, and then imagined how my darling would be overcome to hear it, you may well believe that my quick replies to Jeremy Stickles’s banter were but as the flourish of a drum to cover the sounds of pain.