Who liveth so merry in all this land,
As doth the poor Widow that selleth the Sand?
And ever she singeth, as I can guess,
"Will you buy any Sand, any Sand, Mistress?"
He also discovered among the verses of that most genial and child-like of poets, Robert Herrick, many rhymes that delighted the children, a special favourite being the old watch rhyme—
From noise of scare fires rest ye free,
From murders, Benedicite.
From all mischances that may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night,
Mercy secure ye all and keep
The Goblin from ye while ye sleep.
Past one o'clock and almost two,
My masters all, Good day to you.
Mr. Wycherly was a little put to it to explain the "Goblin," as he would not for the world have told the children anything that might frighten them. He passed it over lightly as "a bad dream," and when Montagu further demanded what that was, Mr. Wycherly felt inexpressibly comforted at the child's ignorance; he had dreamed so many evil dreams himself.
Summer had passed, the late September days were drawing in, but it was still almost hot, as it often is in autumn in the north. Even Mr. Wycherly, who was always cold, admitted that the weather had remained agreeably mild. And when Lady Alicia came, and partly by means of bluster and partly by reason of prolonged petitioning, succeeded in carrying off Miss Esperance to dine at the Big House, Mr. Wycherly seconded her efforts nobly. She had asked Mr. Wycherly, too, but he never went anywhere, and on this occasion he had pointed out that his presence made it perfectly safe for Miss Esperance to leave the children. He would sit with his door open, so that he would hear the faintest sound in the children's room, he would go and see them last thing—"and hear them their prayers," Miss Esperance anxiously interpolated—he would do everything that Miss Esperance usually did.
"Now there's nothing whatever can happen to those children," said Lady Alicia, as they drove away. "They're both looking as brown and bonny as they can well look, and once they're in their beds, they'll just sleep the round of the clock. As for you, my dear, you've hardly been out of the house since they came, and it's very bad for you."
As a rule the children did sleep the round of the clock, but on this particular evening, although they went to sleep directly they were "bedded," as Robina put it, and she had gone home for the night, while Elsa had retired to the back door for a gossip with the minister's maid, Edmund took it into his head to wake up.
Mr. Wycherly was sitting in his arm-chair reading "Marius the Epicurean." It was one of his many imperfections, in the eyes of the inhabitants of Burnhead, that he was known to revel in the works of "yon man, Pater." The very name seemed redolent of papistry, even if the man himself did not happen to be a papist, and it was known that the Reverend Peter Gloag did not approve of his writings. In an English village nobody would have concerned himself as to what anybody read—the amount of reading done at all being quite a negligible quantity—but in a Scottish village, where the cobbler probably reads the "Saturday Review" and the works of Carlyle are as household words, people regard the reading of their neighbours.
The light from the lamp fell full on Mr. Wycherly's white hair and regular, scholarly profile; and the figure in the chair made a pleasant picture of erudite repose. There was something clear-cut and delicately finished about everything connected with Mr. Wycherly's appearance. One long, slim hand with exquisitely tended nails held his book; the other kept up a noiseless rhythmic beat upon the arm of his chair.
Suddenly he heard a little sound, an indescribable small sound as of some soft body moving. He laid down his book and leant forward to listen. Again he heard it, and with it a request for "'Obina." It was not a cry; it was rather a curious, tentative flinging of the word into space to see what would happen.