And now would the famous singer oblige with the “Buy a Broom Polka”? Alas, he did not know it, with or without “concinnity”! But young Ravens might know it, he who was as full of tunes as a dog of fleas, and with his perpetual flow of melody made bread and tea like harvest suppers, and shearing days as jolly as Chrissimus. But where was this musical box? Alas! he had “gone furrin,” being somewhere beyond Southend. But master expected him back for the shearing; he was a rolling stone, was Ravens, but he usually rolled back this time o’ year. No, not rolled with liquor, nor yet like the sheep that broke its arm. Had it been a fat sheep, he would have butchered it, but as it was only store he had set the arm himself. No, he had no need of a vet. for that, like the degenerate young shepherds nowadays; he wouldn’t be beholden to cattle-doctors, not he, keeping for ever o’ salts and gentians and bottles of lotion in his hut, although “suspicioning shab”—it might even be rot from the river-marsh—in one of the sheep which he had just been examining for fly, he had taken the opportunity to ask Jinny to send round Elijah Skindle. ’Tis a long talk that has no turning, and Will, when the narrative thus came, by a wide detour, back to Jinny, ceased fidgeting with the horn, and demanded what she had said to that. It transpired that she had refused to order Elijah, despite that Mrs. Flynt had recommended him as cheaper, alleging, drat her, that Jorrow was the better man. Will, curiously forgetting Mr. Flippance and his horse, concurred in the view that carriers cannot be choosers. He also started another current of indignation against carriers getting other folks to fetch and carry for them. Would the hard-working shepherd, who was too easily put upon, kindly not encourage the girl in future to shirk her job?
Touched by the sense of his own magnanimity and the sixpence slipped into his palm, the good shepherd promised to repress his obligingness in the interests of the higher ethics, and Will, bidding him farewell, slipped behind the row of stag-headed poplars opposite the gate of Frog Farm, and strove—before entering the house—to adjust his horn down his trousers and up his back. It was no easy process with such a “protracted” object: fortunately it was thin, save at the swelling end, but by keeping this bulge below, he could avoid humping his back. To walk with such a ramrod up it and adown one leg would, however, have taxed the talents of the most graceful damsel training for deportment. He hobbled painfully to the rear of the farmhouse, designing to hide the horn before entering, but lo! there was his mother filling the food-pot of his neglected ferrets.
“Oh, my poor Will!” she exclaimed. “I told your father you’d have rheumatics—sitting in chapel in your damp clothes.” She tried to take him pitifully in her arms but he limped away, fearing she would imagine his backbone had come outside.
“It’s only one leg a bit stiff,” he said ungraciously. But she hooked her arm in his and drew her halt offspring towards the back door; a brief but parlous journey, for he felt the horn slipping towards his boot.
“Why, your ankle’s swollen,” said Martha tragically.
“It’ll soon go down,” he assured her.
A terrible struggle agitated the maternal heart. Even Will, preoccupied with his grotesque position, could see her face working.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to have the doctor?”
“Oh no, mother. What nonsense!”
Her clouds lifted a little. “But this may be Jinny’s evening for coming—I could tell her to go for him to-morrow.”