“Always jolly, my little mavis,” said the patriarch, fumbling on, and, unable to resist the infection, his sepulchral bass voice took up the Carters’ Chorus:
“There is Hey, there is Ree,
There is Hoo, there is Gee——”
“Oi wouldn’t unlock the barn,” he broke off to explain as the door swung open, “ef Oi hadn’t such good company.” He stood peering suspiciously into the tall raftered and beamed glooms; redolent of old hay and punctuated with a few cobwebbed and rusty instruments amid the endless litter. Will’s eye was fascinated by an old wine-barrel flanked by a chaff-cutter and a turnip-cutter and covered with boards and weights. He divined it held corn and was thus closed against rats, and a whiff of aniseed came up in memory, and in a flash he saw the faces of Tony Flip and the Deacon—and himself flying after a carrier’s cart.
“They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer.
“Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will.
“Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.”
“Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously.
“There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer.
“But he sent me an adder——” he began.