“I hope you will find yourself mistaken there,” observed my mother. “Have you heard that, in case of the common being inclosed, a piece of ground will be given to every housekeeper in return for his right of common?”
“Surely, George,” said his wife, “that makes a difference?”
“A very great difference,” he replied, “if the lady be sure of it. I make bold, ma’am, to ask?”
On being assured of the fact, George turned round upon Tom to ask why he had not mentioned it.
“Such a promise as that is always made,” said Tom, “but it is never kept. Besides, if it was, what would you do with a piece of ground? You could not afford to till it.”
“Leave that to me,” said George, brightening up. “I may find my own ways and means to keep my cow after all: so remember I make no promises about the meeting till I am sure I have heard the whole truth about the common.”
Tom Webster went away, looking a little mortified; and, as it was dinner-time, and the potatoes were ready, my mother also took her leave, advising George not to be hasty in blaming public measures before he knew the reasons of them. George promised this all the more readily for hearing what favours were designed for his boy. Billy was called in to receive his first lesson in good manners, and to hear what brilliant fortune was in store for him. He was to get himself measured by the tailor and shoe-maker, and to make his appearance the next Monday morning.
Instead of turning homewards, we prolonged our walk through the lanes to a considerable distance.
When we entered the village, we observed as great a bustle in the street as if it had been the day of the much-talked-of meeting. A crowd was slowly making its way along the middle of the street. At first we thought it was a fight; but there was no scuffling, no rocking of the group backwards and forwards as in a fight, no giving way and closing again as if there was fear of any object within. Before we were near enough to see or hear, Sir H. Withers’s carriage came along the street, and the crowd being obliged to give way to let it pass, we saw in the midst a ballad-singer—a youth with tattered dress and a bundle of papers. As the carriage passed, he raised his voice in song, as if to catch the ears of the coachman and footman who were looking back from the box. Ballad-singers and ballads were sufficiently rare at Brooke to justify their curiosity. They soon heard what made them long to stop and hear more, as they no doubt would have done if the carriage had been empty. The singer bawled after them in something like music,
’Twill be all a humbug