[Mary Anerley by R. D. Blackmore]@TWC D-Link book
Mary Anerley

CHAPTER XXII
5/31

Now do you understand all about it?
It must all be ready in half an hour.

And if I make a good dinner out on the moor, why, you might get another half guinea before long." And with these words away strode Pet.
"Well, well," the butler began muttering to himself; "what wickedness are you up to next?
A lassie in his head, and his dear mammy thought he was sickening over his wisdom-teeth! He is beginning airly, and no mistake.

But the gals are a coarse ugly lot about here"-- Master Welldrum was not a Yorkshireman--"and the lad hath good taste in the matter of wine; although he is that contrairy, Solomon's self could not be upsides with him.

Fall fair, fall foul, I must humor the boy, or out of this place I go, neck and crop." Accordingly, Pet found all that he had ordered, and several little things which he had not thought of, especially a corkscrew and a glass; and forgetting half his laziness, he set off briskly, keeping through the trees where no window could espy him, and down a little side glen, all afoot; for it seemed to him safer to forego his pony.
The gill (or "ghyll," as the poet writes it), from which the lonely family that dwelt there took their name, was not upon the bridle-road from Scargate Hall toward Middleton, nor even within eye or reach of any road at all; but overlooked by kites alone, and tracked with thoroughfare of nothing but the mountain streamlet.

The four who lived there--"Bat and Zilpic, Maunder and Insie, of the Gill"-- had nothing to do with, and little to say to, any of the scatterling folk about them, across the blue distance of the moor.


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