Tales of the Yorkshire Wolds (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...cases of yarn, sweeping the floors and H running errands for the overlookers; but it was the only work which Binney Driver could find for a woman to do, and it left her the afternoons and evenings. Still, I was surprised that she should need to accept it, and " axin' about," I learned something I might have known long before if I had been of a gossiping turn. The women had boycotted her. The boycot had set in after a strange dramatic scene, which developed itself suddenly at the chapel gates one Sunday afternoon just as chapel had "loosed." Maggie, in coming out, passed an eager group of women who were " talking her over, " and by a cruel chance heard the very thing said of her with which she most reproached herself. ..".her awn father to t' Sylum," were the fragmentary words she caught, " so's shoo could hae t' house tuv hersel'." There was a general outcry of virtuous amazement and resentment, and right upon it Maggie stood in the midst of them, her eyes flashing. " That's not true, Mally, and you know it's not " she said, confronting Weasel's wife, who had spoken; and then burst into tears. Some of them slipped away, but the woman she addressed, a victim at home but a shrew abroad, stood her ground. "Oh, do Aw?" she retorted cynically. "Hah if thi father telled it?" Then the other passers-by intervened, and Mally, flying into a fury, scandalised the congregation by shouting at the top of her voice: " Hengin's too gooid for 'er Jezebel Stone 'er Jezebel " It made such a commotion as happens when a man falls in a fit; but the crowd melted as Binney Driver's venerable figure was seen at the gates, for there was nobody in Cragside who did not fear the grave majesty of his rebuke, when the kind eyes opened wide under a lowering brow, and...