“Aw,” said Rause, at last, with a finished air of languid weariness, as if quite worn out with importunity, that could not have been much improved on in a drawing-room, “aw, s’pose us med as well, you. If thee woot do’t, I can’t help it, can ’ee?”
So the beautiful moonlight streamed down calmly upon the white ricks, the white loaded waggon, and the white stubble on the slightly rising ground. Still the blare of the brass echoed back from the house, the drum boomed, and the fiddle’s treble sounded over the mead where white skirts flickered round and round. But the mother’s heart, as she stood for a minute alone in her chamber gazing out at the night, was far, far away with her daughter, and almost as much with that other girl who had been to her as a second child.
In the barn the sweet fresh scent of flowers and wheat had long since been overcome by the fumes of tobacco. Big as the barn was, it was full of smoke and the odour of pipes and ale. Hedges and Ruck, not able to do much dancing, had come back, and sat in chairs in the doorway, very happily hobnobbing with Augustus to fill their glasses. At last, however, whether it was the unwonted whirling of the dance, or whether it was the xxxx ale, these two old cronies fell out, and abused each other as only old cronies can, to the intense amusement of the bystanders. These crowded up to listen to their mutual revelations.
“Thee shaved the brook,” said Ruck, shaking his fist. “Thee scooped out the ground on the Squire’s side, wur the bend wur, and put the mud on thy side. I’ll warn thee took nigh three lug of land.”
“I only straightened un,” explained Hedges, “when I cleaned un out. A’ wur terrable crooked.”
“Aw! (with scorn). Thee put all the straightness thee own side a-wuver!”
“Thee bist allus pinching the king’s highway,” shouted Hedges, stung by this last taunt, and only withheld from battle by two strong labourers. “Thee cuts thy hedges by the road inside, and lets um grow out on the green, a-most into the road. A sort of a rolling-fence, doan’t ee zee!”
“Beer in, bark out,” said Pistol-legs, sententiously.
The Squire, hearing the noise, came across from the house; and at sight of him the two would-be combatants quieted down; when Augustus thrust a great double-handled mug between them, from which they had to drink in token of restored amity.
“They won’t know nothing about it to-morrow morning,” said Augustus, as a man of experience, slightly unsteady on his own legs. “They’ll forget all about it.”