Dick Crawshay could not easily grasp all the details of the explanations which were given him; but he quickly comprehended that Madge had been doing her best to make others happy at the risk of her conduct being much misconstrued. So he took her in his arms.
‘Buss me, lass, and forget that I was ever angered with you. But it wasn’t easy to keep temper when all things about the place seemed to be going contrary, and everybody was more dunderheaded than another—not to mention my temper was always known to be of the gunpowder sort, so that one spark was enough to blow up the whole place.’
‘But the explosion is never very destructive,’ she said with a smile and a kiss.
‘Dunno how you take it, Madge, but it always leaves me somehow uncomfortable. Hows’ever, let that be, and come and see to the entries for the Smithfield Club. I’ll be main vexed if we don’t get a prize; they have got a clean bill of health, and I’ll go bail there are no cows or steers in the country to beat them.’
He took Austin Shield as much into his favour as he had done when that person had presented himself under the name of Beecham, and consulted him about the cattle as if he had been the most famous of ‘vets.’ To Jack Hartopp he gave a cordial welcome, and, unwisely, opened a case of hollands, which had come from Amsterdam by way of Harwich, for his delectation.
‘Never you mind,’ he said in answer to the dame’s remonstrance; ‘there is nothing too good for a man that has been as faithful to his mate or master as Jack Hartopp has been to Shield. Clever rogues, both of ’em—and they say, and Philip says, I’m sure of a red rosette at the Smithfield show.’
There was a great gathering at Willowmere this Christmas. The huge barn was cleared for the occasion, and all the lads and lasses of the village who had ever done a day’s work on the farm were invited. Gay ribbons and happy faces, lamps and candles, made the place brilliant. There was a huge bush of mistletoe and holly hanging from the centre of the roof, and Uncle Dick led his dame forward and gave her a sounding kiss under it, amidst the cheers and laughter of the lads, who whirled their lasses along to follow this gallant example.
Then the fiddles struck up Sir Roger de Coverley, and yeoman Dick led off the dance with his dame, both as young in heart as the youngest present, and as joyful as if they had not those long reaches of the past to look back upon. Madge and Philip followed, as if their young lives were to fill the gap between youth and age.