How happy are those who bid farewell to a whole family, silent with gratitude, who will bless them aloud when they are far out of hearing!
“How do I wish, now,” said Farmer Price, “and it’s almost a sin for one that has had such a power of favours done him, to wish for anything more; but how I do wish, wife, that our good friend, the harper was only here at this time. It would do his old, warm heart good. Well, the best of it is, we shall be able next year, when he comes his rounds, to pay him his money with thanks, being all the time, and for ever, as much obliged to him as if we kept it. I long, so I do, to see him in this house again, drinking, as he did, just in this spot, a glass of Susan’s mead, to her very good health.”
“Yes,” said Susan, “and the next time he comes, I can give him one of my guinea-hen’s eggs, and I shall show my lamb, Daisy.”
“True, love,” said her mother, “and he will play that tune and sing that pretty ballad. Where is it? for I have not finished it.”
“Rose ran away with it, mother, but I’ll step after her, and bring it back to you this minute,” said Susan.
Susan found her friend Rose at the hawthorn, in the midst of a crowded circle of her companions, to whom she was reading “Susan’s Lamentation for her Lamb.”
“The words are something, but the tune—the tune—I must have the tune,” cried Philip. “I’ll ask my mother to ask Sir Arthur to try and find out which way that good old man went after the ball; and if he’s above ground, we’ll have him back by Susan’s birthday, and he shall sit here—just exactly here by this, our bush, and he shall play—I mean, if he pleases—that same tune for us, and I shall learn it—I mean, if I can—in a minute.”
The good news that Farmer Price was to be employed to collect the rents, and that Attorney Case was to leave the parish in a month, soon spread over the village. Many came out of their houses to have the pleasure of hearing the joyful tidings confirmed by Susan herself. The crowd on the play-green increased every minute.
“Yes,” cried the triumphant Philip, “I tell you it’s all true, every word of it. Susan’s too modest to say it herself; but I tell ye all, Sir Arthur gave us this play-green for ever, on account of her being so good.”
You see, at last Attorney Case, with all his cunning has not proved a match for “Simple Susan.”