While yet in the middle of his slumber, and busy with a dream of home, which placed him again in the bright warm sunshine by the step of his mother's door, Colin was suddenly startled by the dragging of every inch of bed-covering from off him, and the not very sparing application of a hand-whip about his body, while the voice of Palethorpe summoned him, under the courteous title of a lazy heavyheaded young rascal, to turn out, and get off to work. It was nearly broad day-light; and Colin obeyed the summons with considerable alacrity, though not without informing his driver at the same time, that there was no occasion for a whip to him, because a word would have done quite as well, if not better.
“Then you shall have both, to make sure, and plenty of them too,” replied Mr. Palethorpe. “If long scores are ever to be cleared off, we should begin to pay 'em betimes; and I have a score chalked on for you that will want interest before it is discharged, I know. Mark, you will have this every morning regularly if you are not down stairs as the clock strikes six, neither sooner nor later. If you get up too soon, I shall lay on you just the same as if you got up too late,—for a right hour is a right hour, and six exactly is our time. I 'll make you feel where your mistake was, my boy, when you thought of coming mester here! There's last night's job I owe you for yet, and a good price you shall pay for it, or else I don't know how to reckon.”
A blow on the right ear, and another on the left, immediately after, in order to keep his head in the middle, fell to Colin's lot at the conclusion of this harangue; and a push at the back of the neck which followed directly, enabled him to get out of the room somewhat more speedily than he would have done without that assistance. But to all this—though taken much in dudgeon—being mildness itself as compared with what might have been expected, Colin submitted in a sturdy mood, and without saying anything; though he did not forget to promise himself at some future day to adjust the balances between them.
In consequence of the lack-a-daisical turn which Miss Sowersoft's interview with Mr. Palethorpe had taken on the preceding night, that lady denied to the household the pleasure of her company at breakfast, as she could not meet the ungrateful farm-servant before company again until an explanation in private had taken place. Poor old George, all benignity, and looking like an elder of some by-gone age, seemed more than usually anxious to promote good feeling amongst his fellows, and to restore the harmony which had been destroyed the evening before, on his account. But Palethorpe was unforgiving, and Abel unrepentant: so that, whatever might be the disposition of others, those two characters at least regarded each other over the table much in the same manner as, it might be supposed, two of Mr. Wombwell's beasts, placed on opposite sides of his menagerie, would do when they address each other before a meal-time in that language of the eyes of which poets speak, and seem to intimate a very unequivocal desire to dine upon one another.
That day Master Colin took his first lesson in field-craft, by being set to gather stones from off the wheat-sown lands, before the blade was more than an inch or two out of the ground. His out-door labours were concluded at six in the evening; after which time, as the horses remained to be put up, he was drilled in the art of cleaning, bedding, harnessing, and managing those animals; and, after that was done, he was allowed, by way of amusement, to spend the remaining few hours before bed-time in setting rat-traps, or accompanying some one or other of the men in weasel-shooting along the banksides and hedges.
Some few days elapsed without a reconcilement having taken place between Palethorpe and his mistress; during which time our hero fared considerably better than otherwise he might have done; partly because Miss Sowersoft's attention was not now so completely engrossed as it had hitherto been by her favourite; and partly because that very pleasant personage himself, while unsupported by the smiles and attentions of his mistress, was by no means so formidable in his display of courage as otherwise he would have been. The prospect which had broken on Colin's mind on his first introduction to Snitterton began accordingly to brighten considerably. He liked his employment in the fields, as well as all that followed it, so well, that when on the ensuing Sunday he asked for leave to walk over to Bramleigh for the purpose of seeing his mother and Fanny, and was at once peremptorily denied, he felt that denial as no very great hardship; but soon made up his mind to spend the day as pleasantly as he could, and to write a letter to Fanny, detailing his thoughts and opinions, his likings and dis-likings, instead.
These resolves he eventually put into execution: and everything very probably might have gone on smoothly enough, had not a circumstance utterly unforeseen occurred, whereby he himself was brought into a second dilemma with his mistress and Palethorpe, still worse than the previous one; and whereby, also, the plain-spoken epistle which he had secretly indited for the private and especial perusal of his mother and Fanny, was in an evil hour thrown into the hands of the identical parties about whom, in its honest simplicity, it told so many truthful libels. But the shame of Miss Sowersoft was so deep, and the rage of Palethorpe so high, and the consequences of both to Colin so important, that I verily believe it will occupy nearly the whole of the next chapter to describe them.