Mrs. Estcourt, a little shrinking and nervous, had to open it with the Squire; and, instead of finishing, they commenced with “Sir Roger de Coverley,” that fine old country dance. After a short time she left it, but the rest grew wilder and wilder. The dancing was like a maelstrom, sucking in all that came within its circling sound. Those who had at first held aloof, saying that they were too old or stiff, or didn’t know how, by degrees were drawn in, and frisked as merrily as the lads. So the wearyful women, whose hearts had already been made glad, hummed the tune and flung through it with a will. The children set up a dance of their own, joining hands in a ring. “Let’s jine in,” said Farmer Ruck to Farmer Hedges; and away they went with the stream—a sight not to be seen but once in fifty years. The Ancient, Daddy Pistol-legs, sitting in the barn and listening to the music, lifted his oaken staff and beat time upon an empty barrel. So lustily did the village band blow and fiddle that the carthorses in the meadows, who always cock up their ears at the sound of a drum or a trumpet, galloped to and fro with excitement.
The Squire’s gamekeeper by-and-by came along, with his gun under his arm, to see the fun, when Augustus Basset, with a fine sense of magnanimity, went up to him with his can and poured him out a foaming mug. But as he went to the house to replenish the can he could not forbear muttering to himself, “I can’t see what he wants to show his face here for.”
The bats had now left the tiles of the barn, and were wheeling to and fro. But the band blew and fiddled, well refreshed by Augustus’s can, and the dancers whirled about yet more fast and furious. Sly couples, however, occasionally slipped aside to do a little courting. Tummas and Rause, after slowly sauntering up the hedgerow, came to a gateway, and, looking through, beheld the broad round face of the full moon placidly shining.
“Aw, thur be the moon, you; a’ be as big as a wagon-wheel,” said Tummas, putting his arm as far round her plump waist as it would go.
“Let I bide,” said Rause.
“I wooll kiss ee,” said Tummas sturdily.
“Thee shatn’t.”
There was some struggling, but Tummas succeeded with less difficulty than he expected. The damsel was relenting under the influence of long and faithful attentions. Tummas, like a wise man, hit while the iron was hot, and pressed for the publication of the banns.
“Aw,” said Rause, at last, with a finished air of languid weariness, as if quite worn out with importunity, that could not have been much improved on in a drawing-room, “aw, s’pose us med as well, you. If thee woot do’t, I can’t help it, can ’ee?”
So the beautiful moonlight streamed down calmly upon the white ricks, the white loaded wagon, and the white stubble on the slightly rising ground. Still the blare of the brass echoed back from the house, the drum boomed, and the fiddle’s treble sounded over the mead where white skirts flickered round and round. But the mother’s heart, as she stood for a minute alone in her chamber gazing out at the night, was far, far away with her daughter, and almost as much with that other girl who had been to her as a second child.
In the barn the sweet fresh scent of flowers and wheat had long since been overcome by the fumes of tobacco. Big as the barn was, it was full of smoke and the odour of pipes and ale. Hedges and Ruck, not able to do much dancing, had come back, and sat in chairs in the doorway, very happily hobnobbing with Augustus to fill their glasses. At last, however, whether it was the unwonted whirling of the dance, or whether it was the xxxx ale, these two old cronies fell out, and abused each other as only old cronies can, to the intense amusement of the bystanders. These crowded up to listen to their mutual revelations.
“Thee shaved the brook,” said Ruck, shaking his fist. “Thee scooped out the ground on the Squire’s side, wur the bend wur, and put the mud on thy side. I’ll warn thee took nigh three lug of land.”
“I only straightened un,” explained Hedges, “when I cleaned un out. A’ wur terrable crooked.”
“Aw! (with scorn). Thee put all the straightness thee own side a-wuver!”
“Thee bist allus pinching the king’s highway,” shouted Hedges, stung by this last taunt, and only withheld from battle by two strong labourers. “Thee cuts thy hedges by the road inside, and lets um grow out on the green, a-most into the road. A sort of a rolling-fence, doan’t ee zee!”
“Beer in, bark out,” said Pistol-legs, sententiously.
The Squire, hearing the noise, came across from the house; and at sight of him the two would-be combatants quieted down; when Augustus thrust a great double-handled mug between them,
