ONE:No one spoke, but from Realf's yard came sounds of shouting, the uneasy lowing and stamping of cattle, and the neigh of terrified horses. The whole place was lit up by the glare of the fire, and soon Reuben could see Realf and his two men, Dunk and Juglery, with Mrs.[Pg 437] Realf, the girls, and young Sidney, passing buckets down from the pond and pouring them on the blazing stackswith no effect at all.Strength came to her suddenly; it was like awaking from a nightmare. She thrust him from her, slipped past, and ran out of the room.
TWO:She laughed one of her coarse screaming laughs, with the additional drawback of mirthlessness; then she went out of the room, leaving Caro sobbing into suety palms.
ONE:Rose pattered up to him in the shabby white kid shoes that had been so trim and smart five years ago.
TWO:Next to Reuben sat Harrythe other man whom Boarzell had made. He slouched forward over his plate, in terror lest the food which dropped continually out of his mouth should fall on the tablecloth, and he should be scolded. He looked at least ten years older than Reuben, for his face was covered with wrinkles, and there were streaks of grey in his hair. As he sat and ate he muttered to himself. No one took any notice of him, for the children had been brought up to look upon Uncle Harry as a sort of animal, to whom one must be kind, but with whom it was impossible to hold any rational conversation. Tilly was the most attentive to him, and[Pg 165] would cut up his food and sometimes even put it in his mouth.The stranger instantly divested himself of his wet apparel, and attired himself in Holgrave's yeoman's garb; and then, with the natural regret of one accustomed to traffic, he drew from a secret pocket of his wet doublet, a bag of coin, the wreck of his merchandize, and with a sigh for all he had lost, placed it in his bosom. His dagger was also stuck in his doublet, so that if necessity came, he might use it; and then attentively listening to Holgrave's directions, he threw himself upon a heap of rushes in a corner, and soon after his host had withdrawn to throw the tell-tale garments into the Isborne, he fell into the short, light slumbers of a seaman.
ONE:"How dare you speak to me like this?"
TWO:About a fortnight after the birth of the baron's son was the feast of All-hallows, and from All-hallows eve to the Purification of the Virgin, was little less than a continued festival. Mummers and maskers attired in fantastic habits, wearing garlands of holly and ivy on their heads, and bearing branches of the same in their hands, were to be met, dancing and singing along the roads that led to the castles of the barons, or to the broad beetling houses of those of a lesser degree. The castles, the manor-houses, and even the dwellings of those whom, one would think, could have no earthly object in view in their building but convenience, accorded little with, or rather was in direct opposition to, our present ideas of domestic comfort. The spaciousness of the apartments, lighted, perhaps, by a solitary window, whose small chequered panes, encased in a heavy frame, and divided into three compartments by two solid beams, curved, and meeting at the top in a point, were rendered still more gloomy by the projecting buttresses of the windows above; but still the very construction of the buildings was favourable to hospitality. A dozen, or twenty, or thirty, or fifty persons, according to the rank of the host, might be accommodated, and not the slightest inconvenience felt. The more the merrier, was undoubtedly the adage then: guests were greeted, especially on winter nights, with a genuine hospitable welcome, because, although the capacious hearth looked snug and cheerful, there was a dreariness in the void beyondin the undefined and distant shadows of the apartmentthat could alone be dispelled by additional lights and smiling faces. It will consequently be a natural conclusion, that in the castles of the nobles, and in the houses of those immediately or progressively beneath them, the arrival of the merry mummers was hailed with almost childish delight."Kindly go at once, or I shall call someone."
