A ROYAL INVITATION
[Illustration: 185.jpg Illustrated Capital]
Although I had, for the most part, so very stout an
appetite, that none but mother saw any need of encouraging
me to eat, I could only manage one true good meal
in a day, at the time I speak of. Mother was in
despair at this, and tempted me with the whole of the
rack, and even talked of sending to Porlock for a
druggist who came there twice in a week; and Annie
spent all her time in cooking, and even Lizzie sang
songs to me; for she could sing very sweetly.
But my conscience told me that Betty Muxworthy had
some reason upon her side.
“Latt the young ozebird aloun, zay I. Makk zuch
ado about un, wi’ hogs’-puddens, and hock-bits,
and lambs’-mate, and whaten bradd indade, and
brewers’ ale avore dinner-time, and her not to
zit wi’ no winder aupen—draive me
mad ’e doo, the ov’ee, zuch a passel of
voouls. Do ’un good to starve a bit; and
takk zome on’s wackedness out ov un.”
But mother did not see it so; and she even sent for
Nicholas Snowe to bring his three daughters with him,
and have ale and cake in the parlour, and advise about
what the bees were doing, and when a swarm might be
looked for. Being vexed about this and having
to stop at home nearly half the evening, I lost good
manners so much as to ask him (even in our own house!)
what he meant by not mending the swing-hurdle where
the Lynn stream flows from our land into his, and which
he is bound to maintain. But he looked at me
in a superior manner, and said, “Business, young
man, in business time.”
I had other reason for being vexed with Farmer Nicholas
just now, viz. that I had heard a rumour, after
church one Sunday—when most of all we sorrow
over the sins of one another—that Master
Nicholas Snowe had been seen to gaze tenderly at my
mother, during a passage of the sermon, wherein the
parson spoke well and warmly about the duty of Christian
love. Now, putting one thing with another, about
the bees, and about some ducks, and a bullock with
a broken knee-cap, I more than suspected that Farmer
Nicholas was casting sheep’s eyes at my mother;
not only to save all further trouble in the matter
of the hurdle, but to override me altogether upon
the difficult question of damming. And I knew
quite well that John Fry’s wife never came to
help at the washing without declaring that it was
a sin for a well-looking woman like mother, with plenty
to live on, and only three children, to keep all the
farmers for miles around so unsettled in their minds
about her. Mother used to answer “Oh fie,
Mistress Fry! be good enough to mind your own business.”
But we always saw that she smoothed her apron, and
did her hair up afterwards, and that Mistress Fry
went home at night with a cold pig’s foot or
a bowl of dripping.
[Illustration: 186.jpg Mistress Ridd]
Therefore, on that very night, as I could not well
speak to mother about it, without seeming undutiful,
after lighting the three young ladies—for
so in sooth they called themselves—all the
way home with our stable-lanthorn, I begged good leave
of Farmer Nicholas (who had hung some way behind us)
to say a word in private to him, before he entered
his own house.
