“Aye, aye,” muttered the schoolmaster,
as Adam disappeared, “there you go, stalking
along—stalking along; but you wouldn’t
have been what you are if you hadn’t had a bit
of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest
calf must have something to suck at. There’s
plenty of these big, lumbering fellows ’ud never
have known their A B C if it hadn’t been for
Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish
wench, what is it, what is it? I must go in,
must I? Aye, aye, I’m never to have a will
o’ my own any more. And those pups—what
do you think I’m to do with ’em, when
they’re twice as big as you? For I’m
pretty sure the father was that hulking bull-terrier
of Will Baker’s—wasn’t he now,
eh, you sly hussy?”
(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran
forward into the house. Subjects are sometimes
broached which a well-bred female will ignore.)
“But where’s the use of talking to a woman
with babbies?” continued Bartle. “She’s
got no conscience—no conscience; it’s
all run to milk.”
Chapter XXII
Going to the Birthday Feast
The thirtieth of July was come, and it was one
of those half-dozen warm days which sometimes occur
in the middle of a rainy English summer. No rain
had fallen for the last three or four days, and the
weather was perfect for that time of the year:
there was less dust than usual on the dark-green hedge-rows
and on the wild camomile that starred the roadside,
yet the grass was dry enough for the little children
to roll on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash
of light, downy ripple, high, high up in the far-off
blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor July
merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year
to be born in. Nature seems to make a hot pause
just then: all the loveliest flowers are gone;
the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past;
and yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not
come, and we tremble at the possible storms that may
ruin the precious fruit in the moment of its ripeness.
The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the waggon-loads
of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering
their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches;
the pastures are often a little tanned, yet the corn
has not got its last splendour of red and gold; the
lambs and calves have lost all traces of their innocent
frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep
and cows. But it is a time of leisure on the
farm—that pause between hay-and corn-harvest,
and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton
thought the captain did well to come of age just then,
when they could give their undivided minds to the
flavour of the great cask of ale which had been brewed
the autumn after “the heir” was born, and
was to be tapped on his twenty-first birthday.
The air had been merry with the ringing of church-bells
very early this morning, and every one had made haste
to get through the needful work before twelve, when
it would be time to think of getting ready to go to
the Chase.
