ONE:The struggle was terrible; it wore him out. He fought it desperatelyto neither side would he surrender an inch. Sometimes with Rose's arms about him, her soft cheek against his and her perfidy forgotten, he would be on the brink of giving her the pretty costly thing, whatever it was, that she wanted at the expense of Odiam. At others, out in his fields, or on the slope of Boarzellhalf wild, half tamedwith all those unconquered regions swelling above him, he would feel that he could almost gladly lose Rose altogether, if to keep her meant the sacrifice of one jot of his ambition, one tittle of his hope. Then he would go home, and find her ogling Handshut through the window, or giving tea in her most seductive manner to some young idiot with clean handsand round would go the wheel againround and round....His new occupation, however, gave him undreamed-of opportunities. One of the advantages of shepherding was that it alternated periods of strenuous work with others of comparative idleness. During these Richard would pore over his "hic, h?c, hoc," and parse and analyse on[Pg 131] bits of waste paper. He learned very quickly, and was soon casting about for means to buy a Greek grammar. He felt that his father could not possibly keep him at the farm if he knew both Latin and Greek.
TWO:The tents and stalls were blocked as usual round the central crest of pines. It was all much as it had been five years ago on the day of the Riot. There was the outer fringe of strange dwellingstents full of smoke and sprawling squalling children, tilt carts with soup-pots hanging from their axles over little fires, and[Pg 60] gorgeously painted caravans which stood out aristocratically amidst the prevalent sacking. There was a jangle of voicesthe soft Romany of the gipsies, the shriller cant of the pikers and half-breeds, the broad drawling Sussex of the natives. Head of all the Fair, and superintending the working of the crazy merry-go-round, was Gideon Teazel, a rock-like man, son, he said, of a lord and a woman of the Rosamescros or Hearnes. He stood six foot eight in his boots and could carry a heifer across his shoulders. His wife Aurora, a pure-bred gipsy, told fortunes, and was mixed up in more activities than would appear from her sleepy manner or her invariable position, pipe in mouth, on the steps of her husband's caravan. Gideon loved to display his devotion for her by grotesque endearments and elephantine caressesdue no doubt to the gaujo strain in him, for the true gipsies always treated their women in public as chattels or beasts of burden, though privately they were entirely under their thumbs.'Mid camp-fires gleaming, 'mid shot and shell,
THREE:"Yesleastways four of 'em do. Two havehave left home."
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