“This is the patent age of new inventions,” and someone might make a profit by starting a fête announcing that a drum or a gong would be provided for every individual, to be beaten in a grand universal chorus.
Amaryllis had no little difficulty in getting through the crowd till she found her way behind the booths and slipped along the narrow passage between them and the houses. There was an arched entrance, archaeologically interesting, by which she paused a moment, half inclined to go up and inquire for her boots. The shoemaker who lived there had had them since Christmas, and all that wanted doing was a patch on one toe; they were always just going to be done, but never finished. She read the inscription over his door, “Tiras Wise, Shoemaker; Established 1697.” A different sort of shoemaker to your lively Northampton awls; a man who has been in business two hundred years cannot be hurried. She sighed, and passed on.
The step to Grandfather Iden’s door consisted of one wide stone of semicircular shape, in which the feet of three generations of customers had worn a deep grove. The venerable old gentleman, for he was over ninety, was leaning on the hatch (or lower half of the door), in the act of handing some of his cakes to two village girls who had called for them. These innocent, hamlet girls, supposed to be so rurally simple, had just been telling him how they never forgot his nice cakes, but always came every fair day to buy some. For this they got sixpence each, it being well known that the old gentleman was so delighted with anybody who bought his cakes he generally gave them back their money, and a few coppers besides.
He took Amaryllis by the arm as she stood on the step and pulled her into the shop, asked her if her father were coming, then walked her down by the oven-door, and made her stand up by a silver-mounted peel, to see how tall she was. The peel is the long wooden rod, broad at one end, with which loaves are placed in the baker’s oven. Father Iden being proud of his trade, in his old age had his favourite peel ornamented with silver.
“Too fast—too fast,” he said, shaking his head, and coughing; “you grow too fast; there’s the notch I cut last year, and now you’re two inches taller.” He lowered the peel, and showed her where his thumb was—quite two inches higher than the last year’s mark.
“I want to be tall,” said Amaryllis.
“I daresay—I daresay,” said the old man, in the hasty manner of feeble age, as he cut another notch to record her height. The handle of the peel was notched all round, where he had measured his grandchildren; there were so many marks it was not easy to see how he distinguished them.
“Is your father coming?” he asked, when he had finished with the knife.
“I don’t know.” This was Jesuitically true—she did not know—she could not be certain; but in her heart she was sure he would not come. But she did not want to hear any hard words said about him.
“Has he sent anything? Have you brought anything for me? No. No. Hum!—ha!”—fit of coughing—“Well, well—come in; dinner’s late, there’s time to hear you read—you’re fond of books, you read a great deal at home,”—and so talking, half to himself and half to her, he led the way into the parlour by the shop.
Bowed by more than ninety years, his back curved over forwards, and his limbs curved in the opposite direction, so that the outline of his form resembled a flattened capital S. For his chin hung over his chest, and his knees never straightened themselves, but were always more or less bent as he stood or walked. It was much the attitude of a strong man heavily laden and unable to stand upright—such an attitude as big Jack Duck in his great strength might take when carrying two sacks of wheat at once. There was as heavy a load on Grandfather Iden’s back, but Time is invisible.
He wore a grey suit, as a true miller and baker should, and had worn the same cut and colour for years and years. In the shop, too, he always had a grey hat on, perhaps its original hue was white, but it got to appear grey upon him; a large grey chimney-pot, many sizes too big for his head apparently, for it looked as if forever about to descend and put out his face like an extinguisher. Though his boots were so carefully polished, they quickly took a grey tint from the flour dust as he pottered about the bins in the morning. The ends of his trousers, too long for his antique shanks, folded and creased over his boots, and almost hid his grey cloth under-gaiters.
A great knobbed old nose—but stay, I will not go further, it is not right to paint too faithfully the features of the very aged, which are repellent in spite of themselves; I mean, they cannot help their faces, their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave Father Iden’s face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it reflects everywhere, except one spot.
Amaryllis followed him jauntily—little did she care, reckless girl, for the twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his bed.
The cottage folk, who always know so much, had endless tales of Iden’s wealth; how years ago bushels upon bushels of pennies, done up in five-shilling packets, had been literally carted like potatoes away from the bakehouse to go to London; how ponies were laden with sacks of silver groats, all paid over that furrowed counter
