“Tell ’em at hwome that I should like for supper,—well, lamb’s fry if they can get it; and if they can’t, black-pot; and if they can’t get that, well chitterlings will do.”
“Yes, Sir John.”
The boy took up the basket, and as he set out the notes of a brass band were heard from the direction of the village.
“What’s that?” said Durbeyfield. “Not on account o’ I?”
“’Tis the women’s club-walking, Sir John. Why, your da’ter is one o’ the members.”
“To be sure—I’d quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things! Well, vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and maybe I’ll drive round and inspect the club.”
The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a long while, and the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within the rim of blue hills.
II
The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor, aforesaid, an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though within a four hours’ journey from London.
It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways.