All this information was gathered by Jan.  Jan had heard nothing for many a day that so tickled his fancy.  He bent his steps to Peckaby’s, and went in.  Jan, you know, was troubled neither with pride nor ceremony; nobody less so in all Deerham.  Where inclination took him, there went Jan.

Peckaby, all black, with a bar of iron in his hand, a leather apron on, and a broad grin upon his countenance, was coming out of the door as Jan entered.  The affair seemed to tickle Peckaby’s fancy as much as it tickled Jan’s.  He touched his hair.  “Please, sir, couldn’t you give her a dose of jalap, or something comforting o’ that sort, to bring her to?” asked he, pointing with his thumb indoors, as he stamped across the road to the forge.

Mrs. Peckaby had calmed down from the rampant state to one of prostration.  She sat in her kitchen behind the shop, nursing her knees, and moaning.  Mrs. Duff, who, by Jan’s help, had survived the threatened death fro “cholic,” and was herself again, stood near the sufferer, in company with one or two more cronies.  All the particulars, Susan Peckaby’s contemplated journey, with the deceitful trick played her, had got wind; and the Deerham ladies were in consequence flocking in.

“You didn’t mean going, did you?” began Jan.

“Not mean going!” sobbed Susan Peckaby, rocking herself to and fro.  “I did mean going, sir, and I’m not ashamed to own to it.  If folks is in the luck to be offered a chance of paradise, I dun know many as ud say they wouldn’t catch at it.”

“Paradise, was it?” said Jan.  “What was it chiefly to consist of?”

“Of everything,” moaned Susan Peckaby.  “There isn’t a thing you could wish for under the sun, but what’s to be had in plenty at New Jerusalem.  Dinners and teas, and your own cows, and big houses and parlours, and gardens loaded with fruit, and garden stuff as decays for want o’ cutting, and veils when you go out, and evening dances, like the grand folks here has, and new caps perpetual!  And I have lost it!  They be gone and have left me!—­oh, o-o-o-h!”

“And husbands, besides; one for everybody!” spoke up a girl.  “You forget that, Mrs. Peckaby.”

“Husbands besides,” acquiesced Susan Peckaby, aroused from her moaning.  “Every woman’s sure to be chose by a saint as soon as she gets out.  There’s not such a thing as a old maid there, and there needn’t be no widders.”

Mrs. Duff turned up bar nose, and turned it wrathfully on the girl who had spoken.

“If they call husbands their paradise, keep me away from ’em, say I. You girls be like young bears—­all your troubles have got to come.  You just try a husband, Bess Dawson; whether he’s a saint, or whether he’s a sinner, let him be of a cranky temper, thwarting you at every trick and turn, and you’ll see what sort of a paradise marriage is!  Don’t you think I’m right, sir?”

Jan’s mouth was extended from ear to ear, laughing.