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“We-ell ...”
“She bullies you most terribly, Mrs Ogg. A married lady of your mature years, too!”
Just for a moment, Na
“It’s her way,” she said.
“A very petty and nasty way, to my mind!”
“Oh, yes,” said Na
“Will you be bringing anything to the produce stall, Gytha?” said Gammer Beavis quickly.
“Oh, a couple of bottles, I expect,” said Na
“Oh, homemade wine?” said Letice. “How nice.”
“Sort of like wine, yes. Well, here’s the path,” said Na
“It’s belittling, you know, the way you run around after her,” said Letice.
“Yes. Well. You get used to people. Goodnight to you.”
When she got back to the cottage Gra
“She married a wizard,” said Gra
“Well, wizards can marry, you know. They just have to hand in the staff and pointy hat. There’s no actual law says they can’t, so long as they gives up wizarding. They’re supposed to be married to the job.”
“I should reckon it’s a job being married to her,” said Gra
“Been pickling much this year?” said Na
“My onions all got the screwfly.”
“That’s a pity. You like onions.”
“Even screwflies’ve got to eat,” said Gra
“She’s got a knitted cover on the lid in her privy,” said Na
“Pink?”
“Yes.”
“Nice.”
“She’s not bad,” said Na
Gra
“No, they speaks quietly of you, Esme.”
“Good. Did you see her hatpins?”
“I thought they were rather ... nice, Esme.”
“That’s witchcraft today. All jewellery and no drawers.”
Na
“You could think of it as an honour, really, them not wanting you to take part.”
“That’s nice.”
Na
“Sometimes nice is worth tryin’, Esme,” she said.
“I never does anyone a bad turn if I can’t do ’em a good one, Gytha, you know that. I don’t have to do no frills or fancy labels.”
Na
You got on a lot better with people when you remembered to put frills round it, and took an interest and said things like “How are you?”. Esme didn’t bother with that kind of stuff because she knew already. Na
She put her head on one side. Gra
“You pla
“What look, pray?”
“That look you had when that bandit was found naked up a tree and cryin’ all the time and goin’ on about the horrible thing that was after him. Fu
“He deserved more’n that for what he done.”
“Yeah ... well, you had that look just before ole Hoggett was found beaten black and blue in his own pigsty and wouldn’t talk about it.”
“You mean old Hoggett the wife-beater? Or old Hoggett who won’t never lift his hand to a woman no more?” said Gra
“And it’s the look you had the time all the snow slid down on ole Millson’s house just after he called you an interfering old baggage,” said Na
Gra
“That’s as may be,” said Gra
“Like someone who might go along to the Trials and ... do something,” said Na
Her friend’s glare should have made the air sizzle.
“Oh? So that’s what you think of me? That’s what we’ve come to, have we?”
“Letice thinks we should move with the times —”
“Well? I moves with the times. We ought to move with the times. No one said we ought to give them a push. I expect you’ll be wanting to be going, Gytha. I want to be alone with my thoughts!”
Na
Gra
They refreshed the ground. You needed them. But they weren’t nice.
Na
Some sort of war had been declared, she knew. Gra
She herself didn’t like wi
She turned over under the mountain of eiderdowns.
In Gra
Ru
In her own darkened cottage, Gra
It was a grey-walled room, the colour that old plaster gets not so much from dirt as from age. There was not a thing in it that wasn’t useful, utilitarian, earned its keep. Every flat surface in Na
She rocked gently as the last ember winked out.
It’s hard to contemplate, in the grey hours of the night, that probably the only reason people would come to your funeral would be to make sure you’re dead.
Next day, Percy Hopcroft opened his back door and looked straight up into the blue stare of Gra
“Oh my,” he said, under his breath.
Gra
“Mr Hopcroft, I’ve come about them apples you named after Mrs Ogg,” she said.