Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“Ye’ere all a pack of fools!” said she, giving her head an indignant shake. “A frightenen yourselves about Mother Brickett’s ghost. Who is there as has seen it, I should like to know?”

“I ha’,” said a man. “I wer a walking across the common here, when I found a somethink white and ghastly walking by my side.”

“How big was it?”

“About my height, as nigh as can be. An’ it never sed a word. An’ just as I was ready to drop, it fanished away.”

“And then we all knows,” said another, “as only t’other night her voice was heard in the passage by the tap-room where she called Brickett three times by name, and many bein’ by. An’ it was only yesternight as she came and patted the white cow while Clara wer a milkin’ on it.”

“This be very sartin,” said a tall, pale woman, with a child in her arms: “if she could come back arter she’d gone she ’ould. Her mind was all here when she died. When she was in her last hour her little darter came up to see how she was agoin’ on. ‘Mind the bisness,’ said she, quite sharp; and when Brickett came up, she sent him down pretty quickish. ‘Don’t mind me, mind the customers’—​them were her last words. And she were an audacious woman after money, sure alive.”