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you can always have a Johnny Walker. That’s the best of courting at the Ram Inn. I’ll go and get ready.”
In the kitchen Emily sat grinding out some stitching from a big old hand machine that stood on the table before her: she was making shirts for Sam, I presumed. That little fellow, who was installed at the farm, was seated by her side firing off words from a reading book. The machine rumbled and rattled on, like a whole factory at work, for an inch or two, during which time Sam shouted in shrill explosions like irregular pistol shots: “Do — not — pot —”
“Put!” cried Emily from the machine; “put —” shrilled the child, “the soot — on — my — boot — ” there the machine broke down, and, frightened by the sound of his own voice, the boy stopped in bewilderment and looked round.
“Go on!” said Emily, as she poked in the teeth of the old machine with the scissors, then pulled and prodded again. He began, “— boot — but — you ——” here he died off again, made nervous by the sound of his voice in the stillness. Emily sucked a piece of cotton and pushed it through the needle.
“Now go on,” she said, “—‘but you may’.”
“But — you — may — shoot”:— he shouted away, reassured by the rumble of the machine: “Shoot — the — fox. I— I— It — is — at — the — rot —”
“Root,” shrieked Emily, as she guided the stuff through the doddering jaws of the machine.
“Root,” echoed the boy, and he went off with these crackers: “Root — of — the — tree.”
“Next one!” cried Emily.
“Put — the — ol —” began the boy.
“What?” cried Emily.
“Ole — on —”
“Wait a bit!” cried Emily, and then the machine broke down.
“Hang!” she ejaculated.
“Hang!” shouted the child.
She laughed, and leaned over to him:
“Put the oil in the pan to boil, while I toil in the soil’— Oh, Cyril, I never knew you were there! Go along now, Sam: David ‘11 be at the back somewhere.”
“He’s in the bottom garden,” said I, and the child ran out.
Directly George came in from the scullery, drying himself. He stood on the hearth-rug as he rubbed himself, and surveyed his reflection in the mirror above the high mantlepiece; he looked at himself and smiled. I wondered that he found such satisfaction in his image, seeing that there was a gap in his chin, and an uncertain moth-eaten appearance in one cheek. Mrs Saxton still held this mirror an object of dignity; it was fairly large, and had a well-carven frame; but it left gaps and spots and scratches in one’s countenance, and even where it was brightest, it gave one’s reflection a far-away dim aspect. Notwithstanding, George smiled at himself as he combed his hair, and twisted his moustache.
“You seem to make a good impression on yourself,” said I.
“I was thinking I looked all right — sort of face to go courting with,” he replied, laughing: “You just arrange a patch of black to come and hide your faults — and you’re all right.”
“I always used to think,” said Emily, “that the black spots had swallowed so many faces they were full up, and couldn’t take any more — and the rest was misty because there were so many faces lapped one over the other — reflected.”
“You do see yourself a bit ghostish —” said he, “on a background of your ancestors. I always think when you stop in an old place like this you sort of keep company with your ancestors too much; I sometimes feel like a bit of the old building walking about; the old feelings of the old folks stick to you like the lichens on the walls; you sort of get hoary.”
“That’s it — it’s true,” asserted the father, “people whose families have shifted about much don’t know how it feels. That’s why I’m going to Canada.”
“And I’m going in a pub,” said George, “where it’s quite different — plenty of life.”
“Life!” echoed Emily with contempt.
“That’s the word, my wench,” replied her brother, lapsing into the dialect. “That’s what I’m after. We know such a lot, an’ we know nowt.”
“You do —” said the father, turning to me, “you stay in one place, generation after generation, and you seem to get proud, an’ look on things outside as foolishness. There’s many a thing as any common man knows, as we haven’t a glimpse of. We keep on thinking and feeling the same, year after year, till we’ve only got one side; an’ I suppose they’ve done it before us.”
“It’s ‘Good night an’ God bless you,’ to th’ owd place, granfeythers an’ grammothers,” laughed George as he ran upstairs —“an’ off we go on the gallivant,” he shouted from the landing.
His father shook his head, saying:
“I can’t make out how it is, he’s so different. I suppose it’s being in love —”
We went into the barn to get the bicycles to cycle over to Greymede. George struck a match to look for his pump, and he noticed a great spider scuttle off into the corner of the wall, and sit peeping out at him like a hoary little ghoul.
“How are you, old chap?” said George, nodding to him —“Thought he looked like an old grandfather of mine,” he said to me, laughing, as he pumped up the tyres of the old bicycle for me.
It was Saturday night, so the bar parlour of the Ram Inn was fairly full.
“Hello, George — come co’tin’?” was the cry, followed by a nod and a “Good evenin’,” to me, who was a stranger in the parlour.
“It’s raïght for thaïgh,” said a fat young fellow with an unwilling white moustache, “— tha can co’te as much as ter likes ter ‘a’e, as well as th’ lass, an’ it cost thee nöwt —” at which the room laughed, taking pipes from mouths to do so. George sat down, looking round.
“‘Owd on a bit,” said a black-whiskered man, “tha mun ‘a ‘e patience when to ‘t co’tin’ a lass. Ow’s puttin’ th’ öwd lady ter bed —‘ark thee — can t’ ‘ear — that wor th’ bed latts goin’ bang. Ow’ll be dern in a minnit now, gie ‘er time ter tuck th’ öwd lady up. Can’ ter ‘ear ‘er say ‘er prayers.”
“Strike!” cried the fat young man, exploding:
“Fancy th’ öwd lady sayin’ ‘er prayers! — it ‘ud be enough ter ma’e ‘er false teeth drop out.”
The room laughed.
They began to tell tales about the old landlady. She had practised bone-setting, in which she was very skilful. People come to her from long distances that she might divine their trouble and make right their limbs. She would accept no fee.
Once she had gone up to Dr Fullwood to give him a piece of her mind, inasmuch as he had let a child go for three weeks with a broken collar-bone, whilst treating him for dislocation. The doctor had tried the high hand with her, since when, wherever he went, the miners placed their hands on their shoulders, and groaned: “Oh my collar-bone!”
Here Meg came in. She gave a bright, quick, bird-like look at George, and flushed a brighter red.
“I thought you wasn’t cummin’,” she said.
“Dunna thee bother —‘e’d none stop away,” said the black-whiskered man.
She brought us glasses of whisky, and moved about supplying the men, who chaffed with her honestly and good-naturedly. Then she went out, but we remained in our corner. The men talked on the most peculiar