White Lilac | Page 5

couldn't do no other than fall in with it. But I dunno."
"And how does the name strike you, Mr Snell?" said Mrs Pinhorn, turning to a newcomer.
He was an oldish man, short and broad-shouldered, with a large head and serious grey eyes. Not only his leather apron, but the ends of his stumpy fingers, which were discoloured and brown, showed that he was a cobbler by trade. When Mrs Pinhorn spoke to him, he fingered his cheek thoughtfully, took off his hat, and passed his hand over his high bald forehead.
"What name may you be alludin' to, ma'am?" he enquired very politely.
"The name `Lilac' as Mrs James White's goin' to call her child."
"Lilac--eh! Lilac White. White Lilac," repeated the cobbler musingly. "Well, ma'am, 'tis a pleasant bush and a homely; I can't wish the maid no better than to grow up like her name."
"Why, you wouldn't for sure wish her to grow up homely, would you now, Mr Snell?" said Mrs Wishing with a feeble laugh.
"I would, ma'am," replied Mr Snell, turning rather a severe eye upon the questioner, "I would. For why? Because to be homely is to make the common things of home sweet and pleasant. She can't do no better than that."
Mrs Wishing shrank silenced into the background, like one who has been reproved, and the cobbler advanced to the counter to exchange greetings with Mr Dimbleby, and buy tobacco. The women's voices, the sharp ticking of the clocks, and the deeper tones of the men kept up a steady concert for some time undisturbed. But suddenly the door was thrown violently back on its hinges with a bang, and a tall man in labourer's clothes rushed into their midst. Everyone looked up startled, and on Mrs Wishing's face there was fear as well as surprise when she recognised the newcomer.
"Why, Dan'l, my man," she exclaimed, "what is it?"
Daniel was out of breath with running. He rubbed his forehead with a red pocket handkerchief, looked round in a dazed manner at the assembled group, and at length said hoarsely: "Mrs Greenways bin here?"
"Ah, just gone!" said both the women at once.
"There's trouble up yonder--on the hill," said Daniel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and speaking in a strange, broken voice.
"Mary White's baby!" exclaimed Mrs Pinhorn.
"Fits!" added Mrs Wishing; "they all went off that way."
"Hang the baby," muttered Daniel. He made his way past the women, who had pressed up close to him, to where the cobbler and Dimbleby stood.
"I've fetched the doctor," he said, "and she wants the Greenways to know it; I thought maybe she'd be here."
"What is it? Who's ill?" asked the cobbler.
"Tain't anyone that's ill," answered Daniel; "he's stone dead. They shot him right through the heart."
"Who? Who?" cried all the voices together.
"I found him," continued Daniel, "up in the woods; partly covered up with leaves he was. Smiling peaceful and stone dead. He was always a brave feller and done his dooty, did James White on the hill. But he won't never do it no more."
"Poachers!" exclaimed Dimbleby in a horror-struck voice.
"Poachers it was, sure enough," said Daniel; "an' he's stone dead, James White is. They shot him right through the heart. Seems a pity such a brave chap should die like that."
"An' him such a good husband!" said Mrs Wishing. "An' the baby an' all as we was just talking on," said Mrs Pinhorn; "well, it's a fatherless child now, anyway."
"The family ought to allow the widder a pension," said Mr Dimbleby, "seeing as James White died in their service, so to speak."
"They couldn't do no less," agreed the cobbler.
The idea of fetching Mrs Greenways seemed to have left Daniel's mind for the present: he had now taken a chair, and was engaged in answering the questions with which he was plied on all sides, and in trying to fix the exact hour when he had found poor James White in the woods. "As it might be here, and me standing as it might be there," he said, illustrating his words with the different parcels on the counter before him. It was not until all this was thoroughly understood, and every imaginable expression of pity and surprise had been uttered, that Mrs Pinhorn remembered that the "Greenways ought to know. And I don't see why," she added, seizing her basket with sudden energy, "I shouldn't take her up myself; I'm goin' that way, and she's a slow traveller."
"An' then Dan'l can go straight up home with me," said Mrs Wishing, "and we can drop in as we pass an' see Mrs White, poor soul. She hadn't ought to be alone."
Before nightfall everyone knew the sad tidings. James White had been shot by poachers, and Daniel Wishing had found him lying dead in the woods.
As the days went on, the excitement