White Lilac | Page 5

wish Mrs Greenways could a heard that," said Mrs Pinhorn;
"that'll set Mrs White up more than ever."
"It will so," said Mrs Wishing; "she allers did keep herself to herself
did Mrs White. Not but what she's a decent woman and a kind. Seems
as how, if Mrs Leigh wished to name the child `Lilac', she 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