As soon as it was day, and I saw that the servants of the house began to stir, I went over and knocked soundly upon the great brass knocker. A man with a cropped black poll and powder sifted among it, came and ordered me away. I asked when my lady would be up.
"Not before ten of the clock," said he.
Now, I knew that this would never do for me, because the farmer bodies would certainly arrive before that, drunk or sober. So I told Crophead that he had better go and tell his mistress that there was one come post-haste all the way from the parish of Rowantree, where her property lay, and that the messenger must instantly speak with her.
But Crophead swore at me, and churlishly bade me begone at that hour of the morning. But since he would have slammed the door on me, I set my staff in the crevice and hoised it open again. Ay, and would have made my oak rung acquaint with the side of his ill-favoured head, too, had not a woman's voice cried down the stair to know the reason of the disturbance.
"It is a great nowt from the country, and he will not go away," said
Crophead.
Then I stepped forward into the hall, sending him that withstood me over on his back against the wall. Speaking high and clear as I do to my first class, I said—
"I am Dominie Grier, parish schoolmaster of the parish of Rowantree, madam, and I have come post-haste from that place to speak to her ladyship."
Then I heard a further commotion, as of one shifting furniture, and another voice that spoke rapidly from an inner chamber.
In a little while there came one down the stair and called me to follow. So forthwith I was shown into a room where a lady in a flowered dressing-gown was sitting up in bed eating some fine kind of porridge and cream out of a silver platter.
"Dominie Grier!" said the lady pleasantly, affecting the vulgar dialect, "what has brocht ye so far from home? Have the bairns barred ye oot o' the schule?"