"Very good. You shall have it like an oven if you like: 'tis not for me to say."
Noakes, whose face suggested the recent application of a beefsteak, inspected the rows of chairs, mounted the platform and re-arranged the table, scolded the charwoman who had left her dust-pan on the chairman's seat, and finally departed. Then Eves rejoined the builder.
"They'll be warm afore they gets to work," said the latter, smiling, "And if so be there's any opposition, I won't say but what tempers 'll rise to biling point. However!"
"A queer man, your mayor!" said Eves. "By the way, I'd like to have a look at your furnace."
"Surely, sir. Come wi' me."
He led Eves into the basement, where a young man in shirt-sleeves was stoking the fire.
"I'll have to keep 'ee to-night, Fred," said the builder, "and sorry I be to say it, but the mayor's just been talking to me, and wants the place hotted up. You must stay till eight, my lad, and leave a good fire when you go: there's no telling how long the speechifying will last; these 'lection meetings are that uncertain."
The stoker brushed his arm across his damp brow, and muttered something uncomplimentary of the mayor. Johnson expounded to Eves the merits of his heating system, and followed him up the stairs again.
"The mayor's a busy man just now," said Eves. "Isn't there some sort of a ceremony coming on?"
"Ay, so 'tis, a ceremony that's come down from very ancient days, very ancient indeed, when we was all heathens, so it seems. 'Tis the anointing of the British Stone, they do call it, a rare old block of granite all by itself in a field some way north o' the town. Nobody knows how it come there, but 'tis said there was a battle on the spot, I don't know how many hundred years ago, and a whole cemetery of bones down below. Whatever the truth is, the mayor and corporation marches out in full rig once a year, and the mayor breaks a bottle o' cider, the wine o' the country, atop of the stone. I say 'tis just an excuse for a randy, for they make a sort of fair o't, wi' stalls and merry-go-rounds, and I don't know what all. There won't be so much fun as usual this year, though, owing to shortage of sugar for sweets and cakes and such. Still, maybe 'twill be worth your seeing, being so ancient."