“‘There you’re out, Dame,’ said I, ‘and don’t know any more about Master Noble than a child unborn.’
“‘A silver crown to a silver groat he’ll give a long preachment against the May-pole next May-morning.’
“‘Done with you, Dame,’ said I.
“‘You may lay a golden angel to a penny there will be no May-poles at all, if you make it May twelvemonth,’ said the pedlar, ‘without, indeed, there be such as have pikes at the end of them;’ and with that he pulled out a printed paper, that he brought from London, and read out a long matter about the king and the bishops, and about church organs, and tithes, and play actors, and ship money, and Master Hampden; and made out, as plain as a pike staff, that there would be many a good buff coat and iron head piece taken down from the wall before long. ‘We shall have a civil war soon, and God defend the right,’ said he, as he folded up the paper and took up his pack.
“Civil,” thought I, “that’s a queer word. I have heard talk of civil people and civil speeches, but a civil blow from a battle-axe is a new thing. I’ll tell master all about it when I get home, and axe what it means;—but as I was on the path in Nine Acres, whom should I meet but Master Blount, the young one, and he made me promise not to say a word to you before May-day was come, for fear the old sports might be hindered; and he told me that civil war meant war at home; for which I didn’t think him much of a conjuror, as my guess had reached that far: and now, Master, prithee tell me what civil means.”
“Peter, thou art an honest fellow, and as good a citizen as if thou knewest what it was called in Latin, and that a civil war was a war of citizens, but of a truth this is no matter for smiles; however, ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ This is no morning for a cloudy face.”
“Well, then, here comes one, and the worst that darkens our doors. For my part, I can’t bide the sight of it, ’t would turn all the milk in the dairy.”
The vicar looked over his hedge, and saw the curate of a parish with whom he was but slightly acquainted, walking across the last close, which led by a footway into his orchard. The apple-trees concealed Noble from his approaching visiter, who, just as he reached the gate of the orchard, overtook a little boy, about nine years of age, carrying in his hand a cluster of cowslips half as big as himself, and having a thick crown of field flowers round his straw hat.