Before she could get away from her Barmecide banquet, the brother-in-law and his wife came in, and then the whole story of the oversleeping had to be laughed and marvelled over afresh. The more often Mr. Pennymole told the story, the more his sense of its whimsicalness and wonder grew upon him, and the more his audience enjoyed it. “I made his tea,” cackled Mrs. Pennymole. “I sent it round to the field. So he had two teas!” The cottage rocked with laughter. Only the owl and Jinny preserved their gravity. And even Jinny could not resist the infection when Mrs. Pennymole boasted to her visitors that she herself had been up at four, and Mr. Pennymole, with an air of invincible shrewdness, pointed out that it was “upstairs” she had been. So that though neither of the new-comers could throw light upon the Methusalem mystery, Jinny left the cottage refreshed by more than tea, and with the flavour of the corpse-talk washed away. The humour of it all even went with her on her long homeward tramp. In imagination she heard the oddness of the oversleeping and the duplication of the teas still savoured with grins and guffaws, while the little ones dribbled bedwards, while the elder boys were scrubbed in the scullery, and while the indefatigable Mrs. Pennymole was washing the hero of the history down to his waist. Her fancy followed the tale spreading over the parish, told and retold, borne by Bundock to ever wider circles, adding to the gaiety of the Hundred, abiding as a family tradition when that babe at Mrs. Pennymole’s breast was a grandmother—the tale of how for thirty years Mr. Pennymole had got up at half-past four, and how at long last the record was broken!
Speeding along in this merrier mood, Jinny had almost reached home by a short cut through the woods, when she espied a gay-stringed, battered beaver and learned the tragic truth.
XIII
Uncle Lilliwhyte was carrying by its long legs the spoil of his rusty flintlock—Jinny was glad to see it was only a legitimate curlew with its dagger-like bill. He offered the bird for sale, but she was afraid it had fed too long on the marsh mud. She was glad to hear, though, he had called that very morning and sold her grandfather truffles—Uncle had a pig’s nose for truffles, and her grandfather a passion for them.
“He hadn’t got change for a foive-pun’ note,” Uncle Lilliwhyte reported. “And Oi hadn’t, neither,” he chuckled. “So ye owes me tuppence.”
Jinny was amused at her grandfather’s magnificent mendacity—his lordly way of carrying off his pennilessness.
“Never mind the twopence now,” she said. “You haven’t seen Methusalem, I suppose?”
She had supposed it so often that she took the answer for granted. This reply struck her like a cannon-ball.
“Not since ’Lijah Skindle took him away this marnin’!”
“Elijah Skindle took him!” she gasped, breathless yet relieved. “What for? Where?” Had her grandfather’s fears been justified then?