Pickering swallowed his rage with an effort. He turned to Bolland.
“That’s an offset for my hard words the other day,” he said.
But the farmer thrust aside the proffered olive branch.
“Once a fule, always a fule,” he growled. Pickering, though anything but a fool in business, took the ungracious remark pleasantly enough.
“He ought to sing a rare hymn this afternoon,” he cried. “I’ve put a score of extra sovereigns in his pocket, and he doesn’t even say ‘Thank you.’ Well, it’s the way of the world. Who’s dry?”
This invitation caused an adjournment to the “Black Lion.” The auctioneer knew his clients.
Pickering’s allusion to the hymn was not made without knowledge. At three o’clock, on a part of the green farthest removed from the thronged stalls and the blare of a steam-driven organ, Bolland and a few other earnest spirits surrounded the stentorian preacher and held an open-air service. They selected tunes which everybody knew and, as a result, soon attracted a crowd of older people, some of whom brought their children. Martin, of course, was in the gathering.
Meanwhile, along the line of booths, a couple of leather-lunged men were singing old-time ballads, dealing for the most part with sporting incidents. They soon became the centers of two packed audiences, mainly young men and boys, but containing more than a sprinkling of girls. The ditties were couched in “broad Yorkshire”—sometimes too broad for modern taste. Whenever a particularly crude stanza was bawled forth a chuckle would run through the audience, and coppers in plenty were forthcoming for printed copies of the song, which, however, usually fell short of the blunt phraseology of the original. The raucous ballad singers took risks feared by the printer.
Mrs. Saumarez, leading Angèle by the hand, thought she would like to hear one of these rustic melodies, and halted. Instantly the vendor changed his cue. The lady might be the wife of a magistrate. Once he got fourteen days as a rogue and a vagabond at the instance of just such another interested spectator, who put the police in action.