This is a little too much for Miss Ricketty. She gives way suddenly to a fit of coughing, and, turning her back to Susan, dives under the counter, whether to recover from a very proper confusion, or to indulge in very improper laughter, can now, alas! never be known. When she emerges, however, her face is a fine crimson. ‘That would be very romantic, wouldn’t it?’ says Susan, looking at her and speaking softly, yet with a pretty delight. ‘A marriage like that, with nobody knowing anything except they two, you know; and I feel sure she is lovely, and Mr. Wyndham is very nice-looking too, and after awhile perhaps we shall know her. He will introduce us to her, and we shall be friends, and——’ ‘’Tis a beautiful story,’ says Miss Ricketty, breaking in with unction. ‘An’ beautiful stories, we all know, come thrue. I wish ye joy o’ the bride at the Cottage, Miss Susan; but I wouldn’t be for intherferin’ wid the young married people too soon if I were you, me dear.’ ‘Of course, I shouldn’t do that,’ says Susan hastily, her fair face growing earnest. ‘But I thought that if——’ ‘Well, ye’d betther wait, I think,’ says Miss Ricketty. ‘’Tis bad bein’ in a hurry, as Misther Haldane found out last night.’ ‘Mr. Haldane! What has happened to him?’ ‘Fegs, miss, it seems that last night, as he was descendin’ the steps from the vesthry, he thripped, God help us! an’ fell on his ugly mug an’ broke his front teeth.’ ‘Oh, how dreadful!’ says Susan, real compassion in her tone, though the new curate is rather farther beyond the range of her sympathy than even the old. ‘I wonder father hasn’t heard of it.’ ‘It seems the poor gintleman is keeping it dark,’ says Miss Ricketty, ‘wid the thought of gettin’ thim put in agin widout anyone knowin’. But’—wrathfully—‘’twill be no use for him. I see that villain of a Salter down there’—with a glance out of the window—‘tellin’ every wan of it. Why, ye must have seen him yerself, miss, as ye come by.’ And suddenly Susan does remember the crowd round Salter’s shop-door, with Salter himself in its midst. ‘He’s got hould of it, for sure, and if he has ’twill be short shrift for Misther Haldane.’ ‘But why?’ asks Susan. ‘Why, this, miss! He hates your clergy because he’s not in wid ye, like. A Methody he is; an’ Mr. Haldane goes agin his grain, wid the candles an’ the flowers an’ that, an’ he says how that Mr. Haldane had a dhrop too much last night when he thripped on the vesthry stairs.’ ‘What a shame!’ says Susan indignantly. ‘I know for a fact that Mr. Haldane is——’ ‘Yes, of course, miss. But that’s how thim Methodys does. An’ as for that Salter himself, I don’t believe in him. ’Tis a power o’ whisky he can get undher his own belt widout bein’ found out, until his timper is up. I know for a fact that ’twas only a week ago that he bate his poor wife until she let a screech out of her that would have waked Father D’Arcy himself, only that the seven sleepers aren’t a patch on him.’