"My!" she exclaimed, "what pretty white skin you've got!" And with that her quick eyes noted the mark on his shoulder. "Well, I never—but that's funny!"
"What's funny?" asked the boy.
"I'll tell you later, in the kitchen," she promised, and went off to
Tilda.
The kitchen was of noble size—far larger even than the refectory at Holy Innocents' Orphanage—and worthy of the feast Mrs. Tossell had arrayed there to celebrate the sheep-bringing. The table, laden with hot pies, with dishes of fried rasher and hog's-puddings, black-puddings, sausages, with cold ham and cold ribs of beef, with apple tarts, junkets, jellies, syllabubs, frumenties, with mighty tea-pots and flagons of cider, ran close alongside the window-seat where the children were given their places, and whence, turning their heads, they looked out upon a garden set with clipped box-trees, and bordered with Michaelmas daisies, and upon a tall dove-cote of many holes and ledges crowded with pigeons settling down to their night's rest. On the outside of the table ran an unbacked bench, and at top and bottom stood two ample elbowed chairs for the farmer and his wife; but Mrs. Tossell had surrendered hers to a black-coated man whom all addressed as "Minister," though in talk among themselves they spoke of him rather as The Rounder. Before the company sat he delivered a long grace with much unction. Tilda—a child of the world, and accustomed to take folks as she found them—eyed him with frank curiosity; but in Arthur Miles his black coat and white tie awoke a painful association of ideas, and for a while the child sat nervous and gloomy, without appetite to eat . . . Tilda for once was unobservant of him. The Minister, with his long thin neck, straggling black beard, weak, eloquent mouth and black, shining eyes—the eyes of a born visionary—failed, as well they might, to suggest a thought of Dr. Glasson. She was hungry, too, and her small body glowing deliciously within her clean garments. Amid all this clatter of knives and forks, these laughing voices, these cheerful, innocent faces, who could help casting away care?
Now and again her eyes wandered around the great kitchen—up to the oaken roof, almost black with age, and the hams, sides of bacon, bundles of potherbs, bags of simples, dangling from its beams; across to the old jack that stretched athwart the wall to the left of the fireplace—a curious apparatus, in old times (as Chrissy explained to her) turned by a dog, but now disused and kept only as a relic; to the tall settle on the right with the bars beneath the seat, and behind the bars (so Chrissy averred) a couple of live geese imprisoned, and quietly sitting on their eggs amid all this uproar; to the great cave of the fireplace itself, hung with pothooks and toothed cramps, where a fire of logs burned on a hearthstone so wide that actually—yes, actually—deep in its recess, and behind the fire, were set two smoke-blackened seats, one in each farther angle under the open chimney.
Before the feast had been twenty minutes in progress the farmer looked up and along the table and called for lights. His eyes, he explained, were not so young as they had been. Roger—tallest of the young men— jumped up and lit two oil-lamps that hung from the beams. The lamps had immense reflectors above them, made of tin; but they shone like silver, and Tilda took them for silver.
"That's cheerfuller!" shouted Farmer Tossell with a laugh of great contentment, and fell-to again.
But as the light wavered and anon grew steady, Chrissy leaned over Tilda, touched Arthur Miles on the shoulder, and pointed to the wall opposite. Tilda stared also, following the direction of her finger.
The lamp-light, playing on the broad chimney-piece with its brass candlesticks and china ornaments, reached for a yard or so up the wall, and then was cut off by the shadow of the reflectors. But in that illuminated space, fronting the children, stood out a panel of plaster, moulded in high relief, overlaid with a wash of drab-coloured paint. The moulding was of a coat-of-arms—a shield surrounded by a foliated pattern, and crossed with the same four diamond device as was tattooed on Miles Arthur's shoulder—this with two antlered stags, collared, with hanging chains for supporters; above it a cap of maintenance and a stag's head coupe for crest; and beneath a scroll bearing some words which Tilda could not decipher. She glanced at Chrissy, alert at once and on the defensive. She had recognised the four diamonds, but all the rest was a mere mystery to her.
"He's got just that mark on his shoulder," said Chrissy, meeting her gaze and nodding towards the shield.