“Well, Jim, I could give ’ee a love charm, but as you do tell I there’s no gettin’ near your young lady, I don’t see how you be to indooce her to wear it.” “That’s true!” put in Jim’s mother dolefully. “There, I will say it do seem cruel hard. They were as good friends I do assure ’ee as a young man and a young lady need be. They’ve a-bin walkin’—how long have you an’ Chrissy bin a-walkin’, Jim?” “Fifteen month,” growled Jim gloomily. “Ah, fifteen month, Aunt Betty. An’ Chrissy have a nice bit of money laid by, mind ye. Her father was as pleasant as could be about it, an’ quite friendly, an’ the mother too. She did say to I not above a month ago, I d’ ’low,’ says she, ‘we may be expectin’ to hear banns give out soon,’ she says. Well, an now this young good-for-nothin’ chap must come and whip her up from under my Jim’s very nose. What she can see in him I can’t think, without it be his _korky_ jacket. _Trooper_ Willcocks, as he calls himself—I’d troop him if I had my way. Why didn’t he stay out at the war then, if he be so set up about it?” “Ah, he’s a soldier, is he?” commented Aunt Betty. “A soldier. Ah, my dear, Jim’s young lady bain’t the first to run after a red coat.” “But he han’t got no more a red coat nor you have—nothin’ but what they do call korky—as ugly a colour as ever I see. An’ he bain’t a-goin’ to stop in the army neither. He bain’t a proper soldier at all—jist a common chap as they picked up somewhere and clapped on a horse and sent out.” “He’s in the yeomanry,” explained Jim. “He don’t even come from these parts; he’s home on sick leave, an’ is here visitin’ his uncle, along of his own ’ome bein’ in town and not so healthy. But he’s no more sick than I am. I’d like to make him a bit sicker, I know. Couldn’t ’ee give me a charm for that, Aunt Betty?” Betty rubbed her shrivelled hands together, and fixed her beady eyes meditatively on her great-nephew. “There mid be things as can be done what mid be things a body midn’t like doin’,” she said oracularly. “You know the wax image—but there, I wouldn’t go for to advise such a thing. The power as is give us is give us for good, that’s what I do say. There’s a cure for everything in natur’, if one but knowed how to find it. Now with herbs—I’ve often found out wonderful things with herbs—folks as is troubled wi’ warts and corns could cure them in a minute if they knowed the right thing. The worst wart as ever was can be cured by a bit o’ milkwort. Pull it up, root an’ all, d’ye see, and give ’em a bit every day, pounded wi’ a drop o’ new milk, an’ when the time comes round that the plant, if it was growin’ outside, ’ud be dyin’ down, the wart ’ull just wither away—that’s my _notion_, d’ye see?” “But the image,” persevered Jim. “Did you ever try that? It seems a silly kind o’ thing too,” he added tentatively. “How could a dumb image do anything good or ill?”