<000005>Robert felt warm and glowinghe had enjoyed that dance, and wished he could have danced with Bessie. Perhaps he would dance with her some day.... Behind him, the creak of Harry's fiddle sounded plaintively, with every now and then a hoot from the merry-go-round. The dusk was falling quickly. Yellow flares sprang up from the stalls, casting a strange web of light and darkness over the Fair. Gideon Teazel looked like some carved Colossus as he stood by the roundabout, his great beard glowing on his breast like flames ... behind, in the smeeth of twilight, with the wriggling flare of the lamps, the lump of dancers did not seem to dance, but to writhe like some monster on the green, sending out tentacles, shooting up spines, emitting strange grunts and squallsand at the back of it all the jig, jig, jig of Harry's tune.
ONE:"It's a bad business," he said at last; "that wound in the head's the worst of it. The burns aren't very serious in themselves. You must keep him quiet, and I'll call again to-morrow morning."
TWO:"That's wot I mean, surelye. Could you come and talk to a sick man about all that sort of thing?"
TWO:Besides, David and William had come to a dangerous age, they were beginning to form opinions and ideas of[Pg 398] their own, they were beginning to choose their own friends and pastimes. But what Reuben distrusted most was their affection for each other, it was more fundamental to his anxieties than any outside independence. From childhood they had been inseparable, but in past years he had put this down to the common interests of their play, for there were few boys of their own age on the neighbouring farms. But now they were grown up the devotion persistedthey still did everything together, work or play. Reuben knew that they had secrets from him, their union gave him a sense of isolation. They were fond of him, but he was not to them what they were to each other, and his remoteness seemed to grow with the years."My liege, there are disciples of John Ball in the Toweraye, even among the royal household!"
