But it was not the ungentle shepherd that made for her the centre of the picture, for among these men in dirty green corduroys and rolled-up check shirt-sleeves, whose legs gripped grunting, wheezing, struggling or feebly kicking sheep, was one in cleaner clothes, whose bare, brawny arms gave her a sharp sensation, almost as if he had nipped her with the shears he held in his palm. Was it boredom or the need for his labour that had enlisted Mr. William Flynt in this service? She did not know, but pale and dumb she retreated from the unconscious Will, whose sheep, wedged between his legs, hung limp with meek, helpless eye, the very image of a sacrificial victim, and was being sheared with the meticulous concentration of the outsider bent on showing he is not inferior to the professional. And indeed Will’s was the sole sheep, she saw at once and with admiration, that though nearly bare of its wool showed without blood-fleck: a consummation to which its prudent lethargy had doubtless contributed. Young Ravens, on the other hand, who was now lying with both feet on his animal, had nicked it on ear, leg, and breast: apparently one could not serve two masters—song and scissors.
Perceiving Jinny with her bonnet-box, this young humorist now sang out the old street-cry: “Buy a band-box!”
The chaff stayed her retreat and stiffened her trembling form.
“Hullo!” she retorted, with less than her usual wit. “Back again like a bad penny.”
Even as she spoke she saw Will and his sheep give a spasmodic start, and the first speck of blood appear on the flawless skin. But the shearer did not look up, although he automatically stretched out his hand for the ointment.
“Do ye don’t struggle,” observed Master Peartree amiably to his youthful ewe. “Oi’m not so strong.”
As nobody said anything further, and Master Peartree, intent on his lamb, did not look up, Jinny too stood silent for a moment with her incongruous bonnet-box; recovering her sang-froid, and watching a catcher trying to drive in an unshorn lamb from the pen in which it had cowered and which it now ran round, bleating, terror-stricken and unseizable. She wondered if its heart were thumping more wildly than hers. Not that there was terror in her own breast—rather a strange exultation that her presence had had power to incarnadine the immaculate sheepskin. But her eyes roamed shyly from Will and his nipped victim, and studied with elaborate attention the divers coloured show-cards of the successful ram lambs that made their vaunt upon the beams or along the sloping walls, through which the thatching stuck pleasantly. Her mind went back to that sunny, bracing day in February, to the immense pastoral landscape of straw-roofed sheep-pens, ooze, mangold heaps, and haystacks, on which she had chanced when the lambs now so agitated were new-yeaned: some only an hour or two old, with long skeleton legs and bodies smeared as with yellow gold. How friskily they had soon learnt to leap on their mother’s back! That day she, too, had been as untroubled, needing no outside melody to brisk up her pace.
Young Ravens, inspired by his new audience to a fresh burst of melody, started on “The Mistletoe Bough,” the old ballad she had heard sung in the cottages at Christmas sing-songs, and which she now for the first time connected with the play on Mr. Flippance’s posters.
“Hullo, Jinny,” said Master Peartree at last, her presence slowly percolating. He finished his rebellious lamb and patted it forgivingly on the back, remarking genially: “Get up and let’s have a squint at you.” And as it trotted out happily, he threw its fleece—too small to wind up—on to a great heap in the corner and fell to work on a sheep.
“You’ve just done’em when it’s turned cold,” protested Jinny.