maple as growed in Little Furlong hedge. Hulloa, Pistol-legs!”
This was addressed to an aged man who had crawled up on two sticks. His legs, bent outwards—curved like the butt of a pistol—had obtained him this nickname.
“Nation dry weather,” said the ancient, lifting his head with some difficulty. “Gie me a drap.”
A labourer leaning against the elm handed him his quart.
“Ay, ay; thur bean’t no such ale as thur used to be;”—after he had taken his fill.
“I say, Gaffer,” said another fellow, a carter, who had left his horses by the drinking-trough—“I say, Gaffer Pistol-legs, how old bist thee?”
“Aw,” said the patriarch, shaking his head, “I be amazin’ old, I be. I be vourscore and five year come Christmas.”
“Warn you minds a main deal?”
“I minds when the new water-wheel wur put in Fisher’s mill.”
“When wur thuck?”
“Aw, about dree-score year ago.”
“Anything else, Gaffer?”
“Eez; I minds when your grandfeyther wur put in the stocks.”
“Ha, ha! and after all your ’sperience, Pistol-legs, what do ee think be the best theng of all?” said Hedges.
“Aw,” said the ancient, picking up his sticks, and delivering his philosophy of the summum bonum with intense gusto. “The vinest theng of all be a horn o’ ale and a lardy-cake!”
“S’pose I must be gettin’ on,” said Hedges presently, and stuffing some hay, which had worked out, into his boot again—for he used hay instead of stockings—he got up, and with Ruck walked down the road.
“A pair of skinvlints,” said the wunt-catcher, looking after them. “One night up to West Farm they was settling a dealing job between um. Zo thur wur a fire, for the snow wur on the ground. Ruck he says, ‘A fire be a terrable waste, you. Let’s put he out.’ Zo they doughted the fire, and both got their feet thegither in a zack.”
By a stile the two farmers thus careful of their fuel were gossiping before parting. “Tell ee what,” said Ruck, in a mysterious tone; “this here dark hoss as Val Browne be training for the autumn yent no go. He doan’t know, and it bean’t no good to tell un—these yer quality be so uppish. But thur be a screw loose somewhere; his trainer be a bad un. Doan’t ee put a crownd on un.”
“Aw, to be zure,” said Hedges. “That there Guss Basset will catch it zum ov these yer days. Squire’s kippur says a’ be allus in th’ wood a-poaching.”
Then they parted, and a curious sight it was. First one would go a few paces, and then stop and talk, and presently come back to the stile again. Then both would walk away, and turn when ten yards distant and gossip, till by degrees they met at the stile once more. Not till this process had been repeated at least five times did they finally separate.
Later in the afternoon Geoffrey strolled out from Thorpe Hall into the park, and sat down under the shade of a huge beech-tree, on the verge of the wood, whence he could just see the roof of Greene Ferne in the meadows far below. There he reclined and pondered—“Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.”
“Tu-whit—tu-what!” came the sound of a scythe being sharpened in a mead below.
Presently he became aware of a heavy footstep approaching; the massive trunk of the beech hid him from sight. It was a milker going to the pen. Geoffrey heard him turn his bucket bottom upwards and sit down upon it.
“Danged ef it bean’t vour, I knaws,” he muttered. “The sun’s over Kingsbury steeple. Wurs Rause (Rose): bean’t hur a-coming?”
Then he began to sing, as milkers do to their cows.
“Thee’s got a voice like a wood-pigeon,” said a woman whom Geoffrey heard get over the gate at the corner of the wood. “Thee mumbles, Tummas, like a dumble-dore in a pitcher!”
Geoffrey peeped round the tree, and saw a stout girl in short petticoats, corduroy gaiters, brown hair, and dark eyes.
Tummas: Doan’t thee say nought: I hearn thee in church like a charm o’ starlings.
Rause: Thee go on to milking.
Tummas: I wunt. Come and zet on my knee.
Rause: I’ll zee thee in the pond vust with thee gurt vetlocks uppermost.
Tummas: Aw, wooll ee?
Rause: Eez, ee wooll.
Tummas: Bist a-goin to haymaking to year?
Rause: Eez, in the Voremeads to-morrer.
Tummas: Zum on um means to gie out and axe for a crownd more. Gwain to strike, doan’t ee zee?
Rause: A passel o’ fools.
Tummas: Arl on um ull join. They be going to begin at Mrs. Estcourt’s vust down to Greene Ferne. Her be sure to gie in to um, cos her’s a ’ooman.
Rause: Odd drot um!
Tummas: I zay, Rause.
Rause: Eez, you.
Tummas: When be we a-goin to do it?
Rause: What dost mean?
Tummas: Up to church.
Rause: Thee axe Bob vust—he’ll mash thee.
Tummas: I’ll warm his jacket ef he puts a vinger on ee. Let’s go up to paason.
Rause: Get on with thee.
Geoffrey heard a sound of struggling and two or three resonant kisses.
Tummas: Wooll ee come?
Rause: Go on whoam with thee.
Tummas: Danged ef I’ll stand it! I wunt axe thee no more! Look ee here!
Rause: What’s want?
Tummas: Woot, or wootn’t?
Off went Rause at a run, and Tummas clattering after. Thought the listener, “Was ever the important question put in straighter terms? Woot, or wootn’t? Will you, or won’t you?”
Tu-whit—tu-what! Steadily the scythe was swung, and the swathe fell in rows behind it.
Chapter Three.
The Nether Millstone.
The huge water-wheel in the mill by Warren House went slowly round and round, grinding the corn. The ancient walls of the mill trembled under the ponderous motion, trembled but stood firm, as they had for centuries; so well did the monks see that their workmen mixed their mortar and dressed their stone in the days of the old world. A dull rumbling sound came from the chinks in the boarding that sheltered the wheel from the weather; a sound that could only be caused by an enormous mass in movement. Looking through into the semi-darkness, a heaving monster, black and direful, rolled continually past, threatening, as it seemed, to crush the life out of those who ventured within reach, as the stones within crushed form and shape out of the yellow wheat—the individual grain ground into the general powder. Yet the helpless corn by degrees wore away the solid adamant of its oppressor. Under the bowed apple-tree, clothed with moss, hard by, stood a millstone, grey and discoloured by the weather, thus rendered useless by the very corn it had so relentlessly annihilated.
Old