“Eez; this be featish tackle,” meaning the liquor was good.
“It strikes me,” said Geoffrey, “the demon that led you astray dwelt in a stone jar, with a wicker-work casing.” After which he suggested to the shepherd the desirability of his remaining silent about the affairs of the night, so far as regarded Margaret and himself, and enforced his argument with the present of half a sovereign. The shepherd’s eye glistened at the coin.
“Bless’ee,” said he, “I worked for hur feyther. I sha’n’t know nothing, you med be sure.” Shortly after, they arrived at Warren House. There Geoffrey found that May had got breakfast ready in the parlour, and was made welcome. Jenny brought in a jug of cream for their tea.
“You can’t swing it on your finger,” said Margaret, laughing.
“Our housekeeper,” explained May to Geoffrey, “I mean Jane, not Jenny, is rather fond of gin, dreadful creature. To get it she has to cross the room in front of grandpa’s chair; so to deceive him and make believe there’s nothing in it, she swings the jug slowly on her finger, when it’s half full all the while. One day, however, he insisted on smelling the jug.”
They discussed and laughed over Margaret and Geoffrey’s adventure on the hills, and it was agreed that every effort should be made to conceal it from all but Mrs Estcourt. Margaret had lost one of her earrings, but May said the labourers should be told to look for it, and one or other would very likely find it, if it had been dropped in or near the Cave. After breakfast, between six and seven o’clock, when folks in town were just settling into slumber, May sat down to the ancient piano and began to play. It was one of those antique instruments, found in old houses, which shut up and look like a sideboard, of five octaves only, and small keys, yellow from age, upon which they say our grandmothers played with the backs of their hands level with the keyboard, and without dropping a guinea if one was placed on their white knuckles. Through the open window the warm sunlight entered, tinting Margaret’s brown hair with gold. There came the odour of many flowers, the hum of bees, and the distant sound of rushing water. It was a joyous hour of youth. May and Margaret sang alternately the beautiful old ballad of which they say Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the antistrophe—the reply to the Passionate Shepherd’s desire, “Come live with me, and be my love!”
May (the Shepherd):—
There will I make thee beds of roses
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me, and be my love!
Margaret (the Lady):—
If that the World and Love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love!