The descent of the manors through the monasteries and the persons who purchased them at the Dissolution filled several pages, and was supplemented with a charter recognising rights of infang and outfang, assize of bread and ale, and so forth. Finally, there was a list of the mayors, which some one had carried on in manuscript on a fly-leaf to within ten years of date. There was an air of precision in the exact sentences, and the writer garnished his tale with frequent quotations from Latin writers. In the midst was a wood-cut of a plant having no sort of relevancy to the subject-matter, but for which he returned thanks for the loan of the block.
But he had totally omitted his own times. These quotations, these lists and charters, the extracts from Domesday, read dry and formal—curious, and yet not interesting. Had he described the squires and yeomen, the townspeople of his own day, their lives and manner of thinking, how invaluable and pleasing his work would have been!
Hilary said that in these little country towns years ago people had to be very careful how they acted, lest they should offend some local magnate. He remembered a tradesman telling him how once he had got into great disgrace for putting a new knocker on his private side door, without first asking permission and sending round to obtain the opinion of an old gentleman. This person had nothing whatever to do with the property, but lived retired and ruled his neighbours with a rod of iron. The old knocker was quite worn out, but the new one had scarcely been fastened on when the unfortunate owner was summoned to the presence of the irate old gentleman, who demanded with great wrath what on earth he meant by setting himself up above his station in this way. It was only by a humble answer, and by begging the old gentleman to walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that it should be replaced if he thought proper, that he could be appeased. A man then hardly dared appear in a new hat without first suggesting the idea to his social superior.
THE COOMBE-BOTTOM. CONCLUSION.
'There is "two-o'clock bush,"' said Cicely, pointing to a large hawthorn; 'the shepherds look from the corner of the entrenchment, and if the sun is over that bush they know it is two o'clock.' She was driving me in the pony-trap over the Downs, and we were going to call on Mrs. Luckett's brother, who had a farm among the hills. He had not been down to Lucketts' Place for more than twelve months, and Cicely was resolved to make him promise to come. Though they may be in reality much attached and affectionate, country folk are apt to neglect even their nearest and dearest. The visit is put off from month to month; then comes the harvest, and nothing else can be thought of; and the longer the lapse the more difficult is the remedy. The footpath of friendship, says the ancient British triad, if not frequently travelled becomes overgrown with briars.
Those who live by the land forget the passage of the years. A year is but a harvest. After the ploughing and sowing and cleaning, the reaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of the twelvemonth? It has gone like a day. Thus it is that a farmer talks of twenty years since as if it was only last week, and seems unable to grasp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by some exceptional occurrence. Cicely meant to wake her uncle from this slumber.
We started early on a beautiful July morning—partly to avoid the heat, and partly because Cicely wished to be away when young Aaron shortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard. (This he did in the old-fashioned way, with his teeth.) Besides we thought that, if we waited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'. We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by the road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into town. Some of them had waited like this every market morning for years. There were fewer on the road than usual, it being near harvest, when many do not so much care to leave home.
Upon reaching the foot of the Downs, Cicely left the highway and entered a narrow lane without hedges, but worn low between banks of chalk or white rubble. The track was cut up with ruts so deep that the bed of the pony-trap seemed almost to touch the ground. As we went rather slowly along this awkward place we could see the wild thyme growing on the bank at the side. Presently we got on the slope of the hill, and at the summit passed the entrenchment and the shepherds' timepiece. Thence our track ran along the ridge, on the short sweet turf, where there were few or no ruts, and these easily avoided on that broad open ground. The quick pony now put out his speed, and we raced along as smoothly as if the wheels were running on a carpet. Far below, to the right, stretched wheatfield after wheatfield in a plain between two ranges of the hills. Over the opposite slope, a mile away, came the shadows of the clouds—then down along the corn towards us. Stonechats started from the flints and low bushes as we went by; an old crow—it is always an old crow—rose hastily from behind a fence of withered thorn; and a magpie fluttered down the hill to the fields beneath, where was a flock of sheep. The breeze at this height made the sunshine pleasant.