Page 118 - DRACULA

Dracula

1 August.—I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and
we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the
two others who always come and join him. He is
evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must

have been in his time a most dictatorial person.
He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody.
If he can’t out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes
their silence for agreement with his views.
Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn
frock. She has got a beautiful colour since she has been
here.
I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in
coming and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so
sweet with old people, I think they all fell in love with her
on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not
contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got
him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once
into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it
down.
‘It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that’s what it
be and nowt else. These bans an’ wafts an’ boh-ghosts an’
bar-guests an’ bogles an’ all anent them is only fit to set
bairns an’ dizzy women a’belderin’. They be nowt but air-
blebs. They, an’ all grims an’ signs an’ warnin’s, be all

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