Some Everyday Folk and Dawn | Page 9

had only just unearthed the facts
that day, and was overwhelmingly interested in them.

"I tell you what ought to be done with some people," said grandma
when Mrs Bray halted for breath. "There's no respectability like there
used to be in my young days. In Gool-gool--that's where I was
rared--the people used to take up anythink that wasn't straight. There
was a woman there. She and her husband lived happy and respectable,
with no notion of anythink wrong, till a feller--a blessed feller,"
grandma waxed fierce, "that was only sellin' things and making a living
out of honest folk, come to town an' turned her head. I won't say but he
was a fine-lookin' man, had a grand flowin' beard," grandma spread her
hands out on her chest.
"Must have been lovely with a beard, especially if it was like Uncle
Jake's!" interposed Dawn.
"How dare you, miss! Beards is a natural adornment gave to man by
God, and it's a unnatural notion to carve them off--"
"Some of them do want adorning, I'll admit," said Dawn.
"He was a good-lookin' man," persisted grandma.
"Must have been with a beard!" scornfully contended the irrepressible
Dawn.
"She must be smitten on some of these clean-faced articles," said Mrs
Bray with a laugh, which effected the collapse of Dawn.
"Hold your tongue, miss! surely I can speak in me own house!"
continued grandma. "And he could sing and play, and that sort of thing.
At any rate, this woman was terribly gone on him, and her husband was
heart-broke, and they always lived so happy till then that the people of
the town took it up. They went to the sergeant and told him what they
was goin' to do, and he was in such sympathy with 'em that he got
business that took him to the other end of the town for that night."
"That'll tell you now!" exclaimed Mrs Bray with interest.
"And they went and collared him," proceeded the narrator.

"That'll tell you now, the faggot!" exclaimed Mrs Bray again.
"So they took him and put him on a horse, naked except his trousers,
about twenty of 'em did it, and rode on either side with tar-pots; and
every time he'd turn his head any way to jaw about what he'd do, they'd
swab him in the mouth with it; and they had bags of feathers, and
nearly smothered him with 'em, till with the black tar stickin' on every
way, and all in his great beard, he would be mistook for
Nebuchadnezzar. When they got him out of the town he was let go, an'
they said if he showed hisself in it again worse than that would happen
him. That's what the men of my day did with a bad egg," concluded the
old lady, firm in the belief of the superior virtue of her generation.
"What price beards in a case like that?" came from Dawn.
"That clean-faced feller of yours would have the advantage then," said
Mrs Bray. "And now I'll tell you the point of that story. It was just the
men stickin' up for themselves. If that had been a woman harmed by
her husband going away with some barmaid, or other of them hussies
men are so fond of, there wouldn't have been nothing done to avenge
her. Her heart could have broke, and if she said anything about it
people would have sat on her, but when one of the poor darling men is
hurt it's a different thing."
Mrs Bray had yet more to tell, and after another hearty laugh divulged a
secret that should have pleased a Government lately reduced to
appointing a commission to inquire into a falling birth-rate.
"This," said grandma in explanation, "is a girl who used to be milliner
in Trashe's store in Noonoon--one of them give-herself-airs things, like
all these county-jumpin' fools! W'en you go to buy a thing off of them
they look as if you wasn't fit to tie their shoe-laces, and they ain't got a
stitch to their back, only a few pence a-week from eternal standin' on
their feet, till they're all give way, and only fit for the hospital. I won't
say but this one was a sprightly enough young body and carried her
head high. And there was a feller came to town, was stayin' there at
Jimmeny's pub. for a time, an' walkin' round as if Noonoon wasn't a big
enough place for the likes of him to own. He talked mighty big about

meat export trade, an' that was the end of his glory. He married this girl
that was trimmin' hats, an' she thought she was doin' a stroke to ketch
such a bug, an' now she lives in that little place built bang on the road