ONE:"I w?an't have my lads fooling it in the house," he said to his wife, when he found her winding a skein of wool off Handshut's huge brown paws"they've work enough to do outside wudout spannelling after you women.""Maybe I shan't much longer," said Tilly, looking down at her rolling-pin.
ONE:Farewell, farewell, you jolly young girls!
ONE:"'Tis a capital night," said Byles, as he looked up at the sky in a tone of soliloquy; "I could not have wished for a betterjust light enough to see what we are about, and not enough to tell tales. Sam," continued he, closing the door and sitting again at the fire, "bring me the shafts and let me look if the bow is in order."These tricks were never unkind, for David and William were the most benevolent little boys. They saw life through a golden mist, it smelt of milk and apples, it was full of soft lowings and bleatings and cheepings, of gentle noses to stroke and little downy things to hold. For the first time since it became Reuben's, Odiam made children happy. The farm which had been a galley and a prison to those before them, was an enchanted land of adventure to these two. Old Beatup, who remembered earlier things, would sometimes smile when he saw them trotting hand in hand about the yard, playing long hours in the orchard, and now and then[Pg 385] pleading as a special favour to be allowed to feed the chickens, or help fetch the cows home. He seemed to see the farm peopled by little ghosts who had never dared trot about aimlessly, or had time to play, and had fed the fowls and fetched the cows not as a treat and an adventure, but as a dreary part of the day's grind ... he reflected that "the m?aster had learned summat by the others, surelye."
