'What do you want me to say?'
'I dunno. I want our Foxy.'
'I'll fetch her in the morning.'
'No, you munna. She'm safe at Ed'ard's. Let her bide. I want to be at
Ed'ard's, too.'
'Who comes wailing in the black o' night?' said the voice of Vessons as they neared the hall door. 'I thought it was the lady as no gold comforts—her as hollas "Lost! Alost!" in the Undern Coppy.'
Chapter 26
Undern was in its June mood. Pinks frothed over the edges of the borders, and white bush-roses flung their arms high over the porch. All was heavily fragrant, close, muffling the senses. The trees brooded; the house brooded; the hill hung above, deeply recollected; the bats went with a lagging flight. It was like one of those spell-bound places built for an hour or an aeon or a moment on the borders of elfdom, full of charms and old wizardry, ready to fall inwards at a word, but invincible to all but that word. The hot scent of the trees and the garden mingled with the smell of manure, pigsties, cooking pig-wash and Vessons' 'Tom Moody' tobacco. It made Hazel feel faint—a strange sensation to her.
Vessons stood surveying them as he had done on the bleak night of
Hazel's first coming.
'Where,' he said at last, the countless fine lines that covered his upper lip from nostril to mouth deepening—'where's the reverent?' Receiving no reply but a scowl from his master, he led the horse away.
Reddin, with a kind of gauche gentleness, said: 'I'll show you the house.'