Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open
than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double
cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her
mistress's eye.
"Molly, I niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is
a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an'
times I've told you...."
Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the
more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that
she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step
a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her
cans--caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell
with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering
explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious "Ello!" from Mr. Poyser,
who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.
"There you go!" resumed Mrs. Poyser, in a cutting tone, as she rose and
went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the
fragments of pottery. "It's what I told you 'ud come, over and over
again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug
as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't
before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been
'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been
boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha'
been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but
what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got
the St.
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