When these sports were over, they adjourned to the barn, and commenced an onslaught upon brown loaves, Cheshire cheese, and a barrel of home-brewed beer.
After lunch it was announced that the lamb race was to come off.
Heralds in corduroys spouted it forth with their voices, loud and brazen as trumpets; ballmen cleared the course with their wands of stout ground-ash.
“Come, Kitty,” said John Ashbrook, “Why be dull a day like this? Brighten up, lass, brighten up, there’s plenty of sun behind the clouds yet, though, for my part I cant see any clouds at all.”
“There be clouds, nevertheless, master,” said the young woman. “I be thinkin’ as how he be dead and gone. The clouds are in my heart, where it’s not for the eyes of man to see.”
“It may be so, that be true enough, I dessay, lass, but ye see it beant o’ no manner o’ yoose for a lad or lass a settin’ their minds to be for ever a mournin’. Look at my brother—he can’t forget, poor chap, the one as be dead and gone. Don’t ee follow his example. Look at Joe—he’s the honestest and truest lad in the hull county, and he’s bin after ee ever so long, but you won’t speak to un, though all the maids be a dyin’ for un. Don’t ee like him, Kitty?”
I like him well enough—I could not help doing that there, if it were only for his fondness and attachment to Mr. Phillip, but I couldna marry him.”
“And why not?”
“I couldna without a tellin’ him, and I wouldna do that to save my life.”
“Ye be a strange gell, self-willed and wayward, I’m thinkin’. I dessay, if the truth may be spoken, Joe knows all about what you ha’ to tell him.”