
if I can; that I will, right or wrong,« he added, but in a low voice, and
coughed the uncertain words away the moment afterwards.
    »Oh, Job! if you will help me,« exclaimed Mary, brightening up (though it
was but a wintry gleam after all), »tell me what to say, when they question me;
I shall be so gloppened,49 I sha'n't know what to answer.«
    »Thou canst do nought better than tell the truth. Truth's best at all times,
they say; and for sure it is when folk have to do with lawyers; for they're
'cute and cunning enough to get it out sooner or later, and it makes folk look
like Tom Noddies, when truth follows falsehood, against their will.«
    »But I don't know the truth; I mean - I can't say rightly what I mean; but
I'm sure, if I were pent up, and stared at by hundreds of folk, and asked ever
so simple a question, I should be for answering it wrong; if they asked me if I
had seen you on a Saturday, or a Tuesday, or any day, I should have clean
forgotten all about it, and say the very thing I should not.«
    »Well, well, don't go for to get such notions into your head; they're what
they call narvous, and talking on 'em does no good. Here's Margaret! bless the
wench! Look Mary, how well she guides hersel.«
    Job fell to watching his grand-daughter, as with balancing, measured steps,
timed almost as if to music, she made her way across the street.
    Mary shrank as if from a cold blast - shrank from Margaret! The blind girl,
with her reserve, her silence, seemed to be a severe judge; she, listening,
would be such a check to the trusting earnestness of confidence, which was
beginning to unlock the sympathy of Job. Mary knew herself to blame; felt her
errors in every fibre of her heart; but yet she would rather have had them
spoken about, even in terms of severest censure, than have been treated in the
icy manner in which Margaret had received her that morning.
    »Here's Mary,« said Job, almost as if he wished to propitiate his
grand-daughter, »come to take a bit of dinner with us, for I'll warrant she's
never thought of cooking
