"What a notion! Now I'm going to kiss such foolishness out of you. If it ain't gone when I've given you the first big dose, why, I must begin all over again."
The river lapped its approval against the sides of the old boat. A sedge warbler looked on with his tiny head on one side. The tall reeds nodded. The sun peeped from behind a cloud and shot a golden shaft upon the pair. Why do we think of the orbéd maiden, the Moon, as being kinder to lovers than the great god of day, which warms and fructifies? Upon this artless pair he poured generously his vivifying beams. Suddenly the willows sparkled with diamonds, the grey river became a sheet of silver, the sedge warbler fluted his hymeneal note, and other warblers joined in the chorus.
And, far away, in a great palace, men were bending frowning brows over a vast war-map, gesticulating fiercely, plotting and planning Armageddon.
But the lovers had their hour.
CHAPTER V
UNCLE
Everybody in Nether-Applewhite called Habakkuk Mucklow Uncle.
In all villages remote from what we call civilisation there may be found men like him, loose-limbed, loose-tongued, easy, pleasure-loving, quick-witted in what concerns others, strangely slow to grapple with their own opportunities, always at the mercy of their wives and genially dependent upon them. Uncle was the best thatcher in the countryside. He might have been busy all the time, but it was known that he refused disdainfully the more primitive forms of his work; he never touched barns or stacks. On the other hand, he was artistically eager to tackle the decorative thatching which is still to be found in Wiltshire. Although he was older than his sister, Mrs. Yellam, and past sixty, he still ran afoot with the hounds, and earned handsome tips as an independent harbourer of deer. During many years, also, he had been "beater" to old Captain Davenant, who took out a Forest License from the Crown which afforded him three days' rough shooting a week, from October till the end of January. Nobody, in those parts, knew the northern half of the New Forest better than Habakkuk Mucklow.
Like all his family, he was an upstanding fellow, a six-footer, and finely proportioned, with a cheerful red face, cleanly-shaven save for a wisp of grey whisker which he sported high on his cheek after the fashion adopted by the Iron Duke, whom Habakkuk venerated as the greatest of Englishmen. Had you told him that his hero came from Ireland, he would not have believed it.
Uncle loved creature comforts, and could carry more strong ale without showing it than any man in the parish. Very wisely he had married Jane Rockley who, in her time, had served a long apprenticeship at Pomfret Court as scullery-maid and then kitchen-maid, becoming, finally, cook in that handsome establishment. Jane Mucklow ruled Habakkuk through his stomach, and he was well aware of this, and rebelled constantly against what he considered to be an abuse of power.