“Hullo, young chap!” was the Gaffer’s genial greeting. “What brings you here?”
“Oi—Oi happened to be passin’,” explained Caleb awkwardly, while his puzzled eyes roved from the girl to his senior, and then towards Nip, who was cowering in a corner, too nerve-shattered to leap on the lid again. “You ain’t seen my Willie?” He moved forward questingly.
The older man tried to answer, then a guffaw burst from that toothless mouth, and turning his back he blew his nose thundrously into his handkerchief, while his lean sides shook like a jelly. “Why ever should we see your Willie?” cried Jinny, saving the situation. “Ain’t he gone furrin?”
Caleb rubbed his eyes. “But Oi seen him at this door—he’ll be late for the coach.”
“At this door?” the Gaffer succeeded in saying, and then his handkerchief came into play again and he sneezed and coughed and blew like a grampus.
“Oi seen him just by the sill, swingin’ forth and back like a parrot on a perch.”
At that Jinny had some pains to keep a stiff lip, and even the box-lid quivered, but not with laughter, she surmised.
“I’m afraid you must have dreamed it,” she replied.
“Lord!” quoth Caleb, and dropped dazedly on the box. To see the Gaffer’s face when the lid shot up under his visitor was worth more than Mr. Flippance’s finest show. The very soul of old English mirth was there. You would have thought that this crude device had never entered human brain before, was as fresh as the first laughter of Eden. And what heightened the humour of the situation was that Caleb was by no means overpleased to find Will had no intention of catching his coach. Nor did he begin to enter into the spirit of the thing till, admitting that Martha would “exult in gladness,” it occurred to him what a surprise for her it would be to get her boy delivered back to her inside the box. Eagerly the two old men imagined the scene, catching fire from each other, improvising Martha’s dialogue for her, from her amazement at seeing the box back, down to the colossal climax, till the mere idea had them both rolling about in helpless quiverings and explosions. Nor could Will, though he said he’d be danged if he’d stuff himself in again, and groused he’d got cramp in every limb, altogether escape the contagion, while to witness the roisterous merriment of the two hairy ancients gave Jinny such an exquisite joy of life as not even her lover’s first kiss had given her. Such an assurance streamed from it of life being sound at the centre: a bubbling fount of sweetness and love and innocent laughter. It wiped out for ever the memory of that morbid doubt of the nature of things that had assailed her as she sat under the gaze of the stuffed owl in Mrs. Pennymole’s cottage, the day of the rape of Methusalem. Tears welled through her smiles as Will at last bade his father lend a hand in transporting the box to the waiting cart. It must return to Frog Farm, even if he was not inside it.
“And I don’t believe there ever were any provisions, Jinny,” he grinned, with an afterthought.