Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when Adam entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this accompaniment:  the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to say to each other—­which they had not.  And Mr. Poyser, at the head of the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey’s or Mr. Craig’s ready talk.

“Here, Adam,” said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, “here’s a place kept for you between Mr. Massey and the boys.  It’s a poor tale you couldn’t come to see the pudding when it was whole.”

Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman’s figure, but Dinah was not there.  He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on the eve of her departure.

It was a goodly sight—­that table, with Martin Poyser’s round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates came again.  Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really forgot to finish his own beef to-night—­it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles—­with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds.  Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale.  He held his head on one side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as “Tom Saft,” receiving his second plateful of beef.  A grin of delight broke over Tom’s face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers.  But the delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin—­it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn “haw, haw!” followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey.  Martin Poyser’s large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh.  He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement.

“Tom Saft” was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee.  His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then.  They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom’s wit should prove to be like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day—­rather of a temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations of things.