When the great morning arrived, the whole house was turned upside down. The village itself was agitated. Henry was quite the hero of the moment, despite the sniffing disapproval of Miffin. But one can't destroy a coat and retain a friendly feeling for the cause of the catastrophe.
"Merk moi werds," he said to his apprentice, as together they watched from behind the door the preparations across the street. "Young Che'les will never do nowt. He'll come to a bed end, and Ed'ard John will rue this day. Merk moi werds." And he emphasised his wisdom with a skinny forefinger.
Henry's mother cried over him a little, and impressed upon him that the three pots of blackberry jam—her own making—were at the bottom of his trunk, away from the shirts and linen, in case of accident. His sisters, one by one, threw their arms around him, and said commonplace things to him to hide the less common thoughts in their mind.
At length Henry took his seat on the carrier's waggon, after receiving a luminous impression of London—modern London, not the Edward-John London—from Mr. Jukes of the "Wings and Spur," and drove away, turning his face from his friends to avoid a silly inclination to cry. As the carrier cracked his whip while his horses gathered pace down the street, his passenger looked back to the old familiar house and signalled to the group still standing by the door; but for all the high hopes that beckoned him along this road that ran to London he was sorry to go.
When they were passing the cottage of old Carne, and a sweet face lit by two violet eyes looked out between the dimity curtains, while a girl's hand rattled pleasantly on the window, Henry smiled and waved his arm. But he was dimly conscious he had lost something he could not define. It had to do with tears on a woman's wrinkled face.
CHAPTER III
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL
It was a perfect day in "the sweet o' the year" when the carrier's waggon creaked along the highway to Stratford with Henry Charles perched beside the red-faced driver.