"Div ye want to throw a body over?"
And was ready for him by the door.
"Noo, kick me if ye dare."
And whipped him out through the scullery like a top, with a parting:
"Tek that an' all."
Which he took, like physic, as directed; and ten minutes later, seeing his mother emerge from the calf-house, and being in possession of ample breath for the purpose, put Miss Bates' injustice on record in a historic howl.
CHAPTER VI
The sun had slipped away through Dixon's stackgarth and twilight was subsiding slowly in soft rose amber, like the sands of an hour-glass, as the Spawer wheeled round Hesketh's corner. Against a tremulant pink sky the lich-gate stood out in black profile, edged with luminous copper; the church tower was dipped in dull red gold as far as the luffer of the belfry; and the six Vicarage windows gleamed bloodshot from behind their iron bars when he came upon them for the first time. A group of happy children, playing at calling names and slapping each other down the roadway, stopped their pastime on a sudden and ran up to take awed stock of this presumptuous stranger, who dismounted before his reverence the Vicar's as though he actually meant to open the gate.
At the first contact of bicycle with the railings, the gathered gloom about the Vicarage door seemed suddenly to be sucked inwards, and the eddying dusk reshaped itself over the priestly dimensions of Father Mostyn.
"Ha!" The word rang out in greeting like a genial note of prelude blown on Gabriel's trumpet. "There you are. Capital! capital! I made sure we should find you not so far away." He waltzed down the narrow path to open the gate, balancing both hands as though they held an invisible baby for baptism, and its name was "Welcome." One of these—a plump, soft, balmy, persuasive, clerical right hand,—he gave to the Spawer by the gate; threw it, rather, as Noah might have thrown his dove across the face of the waters, with such a beautiful gesture of benediction that in settling down upon the Spawer's fingers it seemed to confer the silent virtue of a blessing.