‘And we went across the fields, thinking you’d walk,’ said his father.
‘I should have been here this morning; but not so much as a wheelbarrow could I get for my traps; everything was gone to the review. So I went too, thinking I might meet you there. I was then obliged to return to the harbour for the luggage.’
Then there was a welcoming of Captain Bob by pulling out his arms like drawers and shutting them again, smacking him on the back as if he were choking, holding him at arm’s length as if he were of too large type to read close. All which persecution Bob bore with a wide, genial smile that was shaken into fragments and scattered promiscuously among the spectators.
‘Get a chair for ’n!’ said the miller to David, whom they had met in the fields and found to have got nothing worse by his absence than a slight slant in his walk.
‘Never mind—I am not tired—I have been here ever so long,’ said Bob. ‘And I—’ But the chair having been placed behind him, and a smart touch in the hollow of a person’s knee by the edge of that piece of furniture having a tendency to make the person sit without further argument, Bob sank down dumb, and the others drew up other chairs at a convenient nearness for easy analytic vision and the subtler forms of good fellowship. The miller went about saying, ‘David, the nine best glasses from the corner cupboard!’—‘David, the corkscrew!’—‘David, whisk the tail of thy smock-frock round the inside of these quart pots afore you draw drink in ’em—they be an inch thick in dust!’—‘David, lower that chimney-crook a couple of notches that the flame may touch the bottom of the kettle, and light three more of the largest candles!’—‘If you can’t get the cork out of the jar, David, bore a hole in the tub of Hollands that’s buried under the scroff in the fuel-house; d’ye hear?—Dan Brown left en there yesterday as a return for the little porker I gied en.’
When they had all had a thimbleful round, and the superfluous neighbours had reluctantly departed, one by one, the inmates gave their minds to the supper, which David had begun to serve up.
‘What be you rolling back the tablecloth for, David?’ said the miller.
‘Maister Bob have put down one of the under sheets by mistake, and I thought you might not like it, sir, as there’s ladies present!’
‘Faith, ’twas the first thing that came to hand,’ said Robert. ‘It seemed a tablecloth to me.’
‘Never mind—don’t pull off the things now he’s laid ’em down—let it bide,’ said the miller. ‘But where’s Widow Garland and Maidy Anne?’