“What a bonny song!” cried the Farmer’s wife. “Who made the words, dearie?”
“I—I think I’ll look for Bruno,” Sylvie said demurely, and left us hastily. The curious child seemed always afraid of being praised, or even noticed.
“Sylvie planned the words,” Bessie informed us, proud of her superior information: “and Bruno planned the music—and I sang it!” (this last circumstance, by the way, we did not need to be told).
So we followed Sylvie, and all entered the parlour together. Bruno was still standing at the window, with his elbows on the sill. He had, apparently, finished the story that he was telling to the fly, and had found a new occupation. “Don’t imperrupt!” he said as we came in. “I’m counting the Pigs in the field!”
“How many are there?” I enquired.
“About a thousand and four,” said Bruno.
“You mean ‘about a thousand,’ ” Sylvie corrected him. “There’s no good saying ‘and four’: you can’t be sure about the four!”
“And you’re as wrong as ever!” Bruno exclaimed triumphantly. “It’s just the four I can be sure about; ’cause they’re here, grubbling under the window! It’s the thousand I isn’t pruffickly sure about!”
“But some of them have gone into the sty,” Sylvie said, leaning over him to look out of the window.
“Yes,” said Bruno; “but they went so slowly and so fewly, I didn’t care to count them.”
“We must be going, children,” I said. “Wish Bessie goodbye.” Sylvie flung her arms round the little maiden’s neck, and kissed her: but Bruno stood aloof, looking unusually shy. (“I never kiss nobody but Sylvie!” he explained to me afterwards.) The farmer’s wife showed us out: and we were soon on our way back to Elveston.
“And that’s the new public-house that we were talking about, I suppose?” I said, as we came in sight of a long low building, with the words “The Golden Lion” over the door.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Sylvie. “I wonder if her Willie’s inside? Run in, Bruno, and see if he’s there.”
I interposed, feeling that Bruno was, in a sort of way, in my care. “That’s not a place to send a child into.” For already the revelers were getting noisy: and a wild discord of singing, shouting, and meaningless laughter came to us through the open windows.
“They won’t see him, you know,” Sylvie explained. “Wait a minute, Bruno!” She clasped the jewel, that always hung round her neck, between the palms of her hands, and muttered a few words to herself. What they were I could not at all make out, but some mysterious change seemed instantly to pass over us. My feet seemed to me no longer to press the ground, and the dreamlike feeling came upon me, that I was suddenly endowed with the power of floating in the air. I could still just see the children: but their forms were shadowy and unsubstantial, and their voices sounded as if they came from some distant place and time, they were so unreal. However, I offered no further opposition to Bruno’s going into the house. He was back again in a few moments. “No, he isn’t come yet,” he said. “They’re talking about him inside, and saying how drunk he was last week.”
While he was speaking, one of the men lounged out through the door, a pipe in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, and crossed to where we were standing, so as to get a better view along the road. Two or three others leaned out through the open window, each holding his mug of beer, with red faces and sleepy eyes. “Canst see him, lad?” one of them asked.
“I dunnot know,” the man said, taking a step forwards, which brought us nearly face to face. Sylvie hastily pulled me out of his way. “Thanks, child,” I said. “I had forgotten he couldn’t see us. What would have happened if I had stayed in his way?”
“I don’t know,” Sylvie said gravely. “It wouldn’t matter to us; but you may be different.” She said this in her usual voice, but the man took no sort of notice, though she was standing close in front of him, and looking up into his face as she spoke.
“He’s coming now!” cried Bruno, pointing down the road.
“He be a-coomin noo!” echoed the man, stretching out his arm exactly over Bruno’s head, and pointing with his pipe.
“Then chorus agin!” was shouted out by one of the red-faced men in the window: and forthwith a dozen voices yelled, to a harsh discordant melody, the refrain:—
“There’s him, an’ yo’ an’ me,
Roarin’ laddies!
We loves a bit o spree,
Roarin’ laddies we,
Roarin’ laddies
Roarin’ laddies!”
The man lounged back again to the house, joining lustily in the chorus as he went: so that only the children and I were in the road when “Willie” came up.
VI
Willie’s Wife
He made for the door of the public-house, but the children intercepted him. Sylvie clung to one arm; while Bruno, on the opposite side, was pushing him with all his strength, with many inarticulate cries of “Gee-up! Gee-back! Woah then!” which he had picked up from the wagoners.
“Willie” took not the least notice of them: he was simply conscious that something had checked him: and, for want of any other way of accounting for it, he seemed to regard it as his own act.
“I wunnut coom in,” he said: “not today.”
“A mug o’ beer wunnut hurt ’ee!” his friends shouted in chorus. “Two mugs wunnut hurt ’ee! Nor a dozen mugs!”
“Nay,” said Willie. “I’m agoan whoam.”
“What, withouten thy drink, Willie man?” shouted the others. But “Willie man” would have no more discussion, and turned doggedly away, the children keeping one on each side of him, to guard him against any change in his sudden resolution.
For a while he walked on stoutly enough, keeping his hands in his pockets, and softly whistling a tune, in time to his heavy tread: his success, in appearing entirely at his ease, was almost complete; but
