However
it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious
brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout
and handle.
"Did ever anybody see the like?" she said, with a suddenly lowered
tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. "The jugs are
bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the
finger like a snail."
"Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face," said her husband, who
had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.
"It's all very fine to look on and grin," rejoined Mrs. Poyser; "but
there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand
like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands.
What is to be broke WILL be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my
life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery
all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Hetty, are you mad?
Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as
there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?"
A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Poyser was speaking, was caused,
less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than
by that strange appearance of Hetty, which had startled her aunt.
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