If sheep were treated as unfortunate human beings are, they would take a bitter revenge; though they are the mildest of creatures, they would soon turn round in a venomous manner. If they did not receive sufficient to eat and drink, and were not well sheltered, they would take a bitter revenge: they would die. Loss of £sd!
But human beings have not even got the courage or energy to do that; they put up with anything, and drag on—miserables that they are.
I said they were not equal in value to the sheep—why, they’re not worth anything when they’re dead. You cannot even sell the skins of the Things!
Slip-slop in the dust they drive along to the fair, where there will be an immense amount of eating and a far larger amount of drinking all round them, in every house they pass, and up to midnight. They will see valuable animals, and men with well-lined pockets. What on earth can a tramp find to please him among all this? It is not for him; yet he goes to see it.
VII
The crowd began to pass more thickly, when Amaryllis saw a man coming up the road in the opposite direction to that in which the multitude was moving. They were going to the fair; he had his back to it, and a party in a trap rallied him smartly for his folly.
“What! bean’t you a-going to fair? Why, Measter Duck, what’s up? Looking for a thunderstorm?”—which young ducks are supposed to enjoy. “Ha! ha! ha!”
Measter Duck, with a broad grin on his face, nevertheless plodded up the hill, and passed beneath Amaryllis.
She knew him very well, for he lived in the hamlet, but she would not have taken any notice of him had he not been so elaborately dressed. His high silk hat shone glossy; his black broadcloth coat was new and carefully brushed; he was in black all over, in contrast with the mass of people who had gone by that morning. A blue necktie, bright and clean, spotless linen, gloves rolled up in a ball in one hand, whiskers brushed, boots shining, teeth clean, Johnny was off to the fair!
The coat fitted him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; his back was immense, and straight, too, for he walked upright for a farmer, nor was his bulk altogether without effect, for he was not overburdened with abdomen, so that it showed to the best advantage. He was a little over the average height, but not tall; he had grown laterally.
He could lift two sacks of wheat from the ground. You just try to lift one.
His sleeves were too long, so that only the great knuckles of his speckled hands were visible. Red whiskers, red hair, blue eyes, speckled face, straight lips, thick, like the edge of an earthenware pitcher, and of much the same coarse red hue, always a ready grin, a round, hard head, which you might have hit safely with a mallet; and there is the picture.
For some reason, very big men do not look well in glossy black coats and silk hats; they seem to want wideawakes, bowlers, caps, anything rather than a Paris hat, and some loose-cut jacket of a free-and-easy colour, suitable for the field, or cricket, or boating. They do not belong to the town and narrow doorways; Nature grew them for hills and fields.
Compared with the Continental folk, most Englishmen are big, and therefore, as their “best” suits do not fit in with their character as written in limbs and shoulders, the Continent thinks us clumsy. The truth is, it is the Continent that is little.
“Isn’t he ugly?” thought Amaryllis, looking down on poor John Duck. “Isn’t he ugly?” Now the top of the wall was crusted with moss, which has a way of growing into bricks and mortar, and attaching particles of brick to its roots. As she watched the people she unconsciously trifled with a little piece of moss—her hand happened at the moment to project over the wall, and as John Duck went under she dropped the bit of moss straight on his glossy hat. Tap! the fragment of brick adhering to the moss struck the hollow hat smartly like a drum.
She drew back quickly, laughing and blushing, and angry with herself all at the same time, for she had done it without a thought.
Jack pulled off his hat, saw nothing, and put it on again, suspecting that someone in a passing gig had “chucked” something at him.
In a minute Amaryllis peeped over the wall, and, seeing his broad back a long way up the road, resumed her stand.
“How ever could I do such a stupid thing?” she thought. “But isn’t he ugly? Aren’t they all ugly? All of them—horridly ugly.”
The entire unknown race of Man was hideous. So coarse in feature—their noses were thick, half an inch thick, or enormously long and knobbed at the end like a walking-stick, or curved like a reaping-hook, or slewed to one side, or flat as if they had been smashed, or short and stumpy and incomplete, or spotted with red blotches, or turned up in the vulgarest manner—nobody had a good nose.
Their eyes were goggles, round and staring—like liquid marbles—they had no eyelashes, and their eyebrows were either white and invisible, or shaggy, as if thistles grew along their foreheads.
Their cheeks were speckled and freckled and red and brick-dust and leather-coloured, and enclosed with scrubby whiskers, like a garden hedge.
Upon the whole, those who shaved and were smooth looked worse than those who did not, for they thus exposed the angularities of their chins and jaws.
They wore such horrid hats on the top of these
