"Say," he said, more cheerfully than he had yet spoken, "you haven't been drinking, have you?"
"Intoxicants, do you mean?" the Englishman asked, without turning around. "No, I do not drink."
"You didn't happen to bring anything over with you, did you, for seasickness on the boat?" Mr. Motherwell queried anxiously, holding the lantern above his head.
"No, I did not," the young man said laconically.
"Turn out at five to-morrow morning then," his employer snapped in evident disappointment, and he lowered the lantern so quickly that it went out.
The young man lay down upon his hard bed. His utter weariness was a blessing to him that night, for not even the racing mice, the musty smells or the hardness of his straw bed could keep him from slumber.
In what seemed to him but a few minutes, he was awakened by a loud knocking on the door below, voices shouted, a dog barked, cow-bells jangled; he could hear doors banging everywhere, a faint streak of sunlight lay wan and pale on the mud-plastered walls.
"By Jove!" he said yawning, "I know now what Kipling meant when he said 'the dawn comes up like thunder.'"
A few weeks after Arthur's arrival, Mrs. Motherwell called him from the barn, where he sat industriously mending bags, to unhitch her horse from the buggy. She had just driven home from Millford. Nobody had taken the trouble to show Arthur how it was done.
"Any fool ought to know," Mr. Motherwell said.