TWO:"Master Calverley, I will tell you truly," answered Mary, in a voice scarcely audible from its tremor. "You have been our best friend, and you would not see me hung? It was all a mistakeI am sure I wouldn't hurt a hair of the dear creature's head." And here the feelings of woman so far prevailed, that she shed some disinterested tears.Reuben struck his fist on the table, and she dropped the paper with a little cry.
TWO:"WeI can't."Harry made good progress, and Reuben decided that he was to start his career at the October Fair. There had been a fiddler at the Fair for years, partly for the lasses and lads to dance to, partly for the less Bacchic entertainments of their elders. It was at the Fair that men took his measure, and engaged him accordingly for weddings and such festivals. Luck would have it that[Pg 58] for the last two years there had been no official fiddlerold Abel Pinch having been seduced by a semi-urban show, which wandered round London, camping on waste grounds and commons. The musical element had been supplied by strays, and Reuben had no doubt but that he should now be able to instal his brother honourably as chief musician.
TWO:So much of his life had been bound up with the Fair[Pg 461] that somehow a part of him seemed to be jigging at it still, down in the Rother field. It was at the Fair that he had first resolved to conquer Boarzell, and he saw himself rushing with the crowd to Totease, scuffling round the barns while the big flames shot out ... and later he saw himself dancing with Naomi to Harry's fiddle. What had Harry played?a strange tune, "The Song of Seth's Home"one never heard it now, but he could remember fragments of it....
Of course the neighbourhood gloated; and the rustic convention was set aside in Rose's favour, and all the shame of her elopement heaped on Reuben.Once Handshut was gone, her heart would not pursue him. It was his continual presence that tormented. True, he never sought her out, or persecuted her, or even spoke to her without her speaking firsthe only looked in at the window.... But a woman soon learns what it means to have a man's face between her and the simplicities of life in her garden, between her and the divinities of the stars and moon."Git up!" cried Backfield, colouring with annoyance."I'm hungry, Naomi. Wot have you got fur me?"
荣誉榜
THREE:
THREE:"I'm sorry," he said in a low thick voice"I'm sorry I interrupted yourcrying.""My lord baron," replied Edith, "I have nothing to say that can bring home guilt to the guilty, or do right to the wronged: but I will say, my lord, that what a man is to-day he will be to-morrow, unless he has some end to answer by changing. The esquire will scarcely give the word of courtesy to the most reputable vassal, and yet did he talk secretly and familiarly with John Bylesand here is one who will swear that he heard him repeat the name of my son, and then something about an arrow."
