"Goin' to wear one o' them wing things side of 'is 'at, that's what he's goin' to wear," pronounced Mr. Hunt doggedly. "Tall 'at. Tall 'at," he reaffirmed; but "In a castle!" Mrs. Hunt continued, heedless of the interruption. "Burdon Old Manor, they call it, at a place called Little Letham, which Letham is the family name of the family, they giving their name to it as is very often the case, and a proper castle it is, too, though called a Manor."
Mrs. Hunt foamed out this information with a heat that increased as she perceived the morose indifference with which Egbert accepted it. Throwing herself into the third person, "Don't you 'ear what your mother is a telling of you, Sulk?" she demanded. Her eye caught on the wall behind Sulk's head a coloured presentation calendar depicting Lambert Simnel at scullion's work in an enormous kitchen, and she took inspiration. "A proper castle, your mother's telling you, where you'll have scullings in the kitchen; that's what you'll 'ave, you nasty sulk, you! Can't you say something?"
"I'll sculling 'em!" breathed Egbert, yielding to her request. He scented in this new form of acquaintance some fresh trial and indignity. "I'll sculling 'em!" he repeated.
His fierce intention earned him at once, and earned him full, the thump upon his head that his mother's excitement and his own gloom had been conspiring to inflict ever since he entered the cottage; and he trudged his way back to Hillside viciously embittered against every point of an aching day: his mistress, her visitors, the approaching change in his life, his mother, the "scullings." "Tyrangs!" said Egbert. He stumbled over a stone as he pronounced the savage word and bit his tongue most painfully. "Boil yer," said Egbert to the stone; and, including the stone with the "tyrangs," as wearily he got him to bed, "Boil um!" he said. "Tyrangs! Toads!"
CHAPTER II
A CHANGE IN THE PEERAGE
This hazard foundation of life! As a stone tossed down a hillside dislodges others and sets them rolling, themselves dislodging more till the first light pitch will gather to a rumble where was peace, the first stone cause to jump and shout many score that might have held their place long after the thrower's idle hand was equal dust with the dust of their descent—so it is with the lightest action that the least of us may idly toss upon our small affairs. We cannot move alone. Life has us in a web, within whose meshes none may stir a hand but he pulls here, loosens there, and sets a wave of movement through a hundred tangles of the coil.
This hazard foundation of life! Egbert Hunt was made to lean wearily over the gate that evening and the toads and "tyrangs" whose oppression had cost him a bitter day were set in his path by a movement in the web, leagues upon leagues of land and sea from Miller's Field. Life has us in a web. In one remote corner an Afridi tribesman shot a British officer: that was his movement in the meshes, and swift, swift, the chain of tugs set up thereby acted upon a morose page-boy in another remote corner, rendering him bone-tired through ushering the visitors come to congratulate those who had stepped into the dead man's shoes.
This hazard touch even in the billet that the Afridi tribesman selected for his bullet! In sheeting rain, behind a rock above a pass on the northwestern frontier of India, Multan Khan—Afridi, one-time sepoy, deserter from his regiment, scoundrel, first-class shot—snuggled his cheek against his stolen rifle, hesitated for a moment between the heads of three British officers, drew a line on one, pressed the trigger; and, while he chuckled over his success, himself pitched dead with a bullet through the incautious skull he had craned over the rock the better to enjoy the fruits of his skill.