This is new to you, she said smiling.
Nothing is new to me, answered Kenelm, mournfully. But allow me to observe that to do things well you should only do one thing at a time. I am here to make hay and not conversation.
My! said the girl, in amazed ejaculation, and turned off with a toss of her pretty head.
I wonder if that jade has got an uncle, thought Kenelm. The farmer, who took his share of work with the men, halting now and then to look round, noticed Kenelms vigorous application with much approval, and at the close of the days work shook him heartily by the hand, leaving a two-shilling piece in his palm. The heir of the Chillinglys gazed on that honorarium, and turned it over with the finger and thumb of the left hand.
Be nt it eno? said the farmer, nettled.
Pardon me, answered Kenelm. But, to tell you the truth, it is the first money I ever earned by my own bodily labour; and I regard it with equal curiosity and respect. But if it would not offend you, I would rather that, instead of the money, you had offered me some supper; for I have tasted nothing but bread and water since the morning.
You shall have the money and supper both, my lad, said the farmer, cheerily. And if you will stay and help till I have got in the hay, I dare say my good woman can find you a better bed than youll get in the village inn; if, indeed, you can get one there at all.
You are very kind. But before I accept your hospitality excuse one question: have you any nieces about you?
Nieces! echoed the farmer, mechanically thrusting his hands into his breeches-pockets as if in search of something there, nieces about me! what do you mean? Be that a newfangled word for coppers?
Not for coppers, though perhaps for brass. But I spoke without metaphor. I object to nieces upon abstract principle, confirmed by the test of experience.
The farmer stared, and thought his new friend not quite so sound in his mental as he evidently was in his physical conformation, but replied, with a laugh, Make yourself easy, then. I have only one niece, and she is married to an iron-monger and lives in Exeter.
On entering the farmhouse, Kenelms host conducted him straight into the kitchen, and cried out, in a hearty voice, to a comely middle-aged dame, who, with a stout girl, was intent on culinary operations, Hulloa! old woman, I have brought you a guest who has well earned his supper, for he has done the work of two, and I have promised him a bed.
The farmers wife turned sharply round. He is heartily welcome to supper. As to a bed, she said doubtfully, I dont know. But here her eyes settled on Kenelm; and there was something in his aspect so unlike what she expected to see in an itinerant haymaker, that she involuntarily dropped a courtesy, and resumed, with a change of tone, The gentleman shall have the guest-room: but it will take a little time to get ready; you know, John, all the furniture is covered up.
Well, wife, there will be leisure eno for that. He dont want to go to roost till he has supped.
Certainly not, said Kenelm, sniffing a very agreeable odour.
Where are the girls? asked the farmer.
They have been in these five minutes, and gone upstairs to tidy themselves.
What girls? faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. I thought you said you had no nieces.
But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you are not afraid of them, are you?
Sir, replied Kenelm, with a polite and politic evasion of that question, if your daughters are like their mother, you cant say that they are not dangerous.
Come, cried the farmer, looking very much pleased, while his dame smiled and blushed, come, thats as nicely said as if you were canvassing the county. Tis not among haymakers that you learned manners, I guess; and perhaps I have been making too free with my betters.
What! quoth the courteous Kenelm, do you mean to imply that you were too free with your shillings? Apologize for that, if you like, but I dont think youll get back the shillings. I have not seen so much of this life as you have, but, according to my experience, when a man once parts with his money, whether to his betters or his worsers, the chances are that hell never see it again.
At this aphorism the farmer laughed ready to kill himself, his wife chuckled, and even the maid-of-all-work grinned. Kenelm, preserving his unalterable gravity, said to himself,
Wit consists in the epigrammatic expression of a commonplace truth, and the dullest remark on the worth of money is almost as sure of successful appreciation as the dullest remark on the worthlessness of women. Certainly I am a wit without knowing it.
Here the farmer touched him on the shouldertouched it, did not slap it, as he would have done ten minutes beforeand said,
We must not disturb the Missis or we shall get no supper. Ill just go and give a look into the cow-sheds. Do you know much about cows?
Yes, cows produce cream and butter. The best cows are those which produce at the least cost the best cream and butter. But how the best cream and butter can be produced at a price which will place them free of expense on a poor mans breakfast-table is a question to be settled by a Reformed Parliament and a Liberal Administration. In the meanwhile let us not delay the supper.
The farmer and his guest quitted the kitchen and entered the farmyard.
You are quite a stranger in these parts?
Quite.
You dont even know my name?
No, except that I heard your wife call you John.
My name is John Saunderson.
You are quite a stranger in these parts?
Quite.
You dont even know my name?
No, except that I heard your wife call you John.
My name is John Saunderson.
Ah! you come from the North, then? Thats why you are so sensible and shrewd. Names that end in son are chiefly borne by the descendants of the Danes, to whom King Alfred, Heaven bless him! peacefully assigned no less than sixteen English counties. And when a Dane was called somebodys son, it is a sign that he was the son of a somebody.
By gosh! I never heard that before.
If I thought you had I should not have said it.
Now I have told you my name, what is yours?
A wise man asks questions and a fool answers them. Suppose for a moment that I am not a fool.
Farmer Saunderson scratched his head, and looked more puzzled than became the descendant of a Dane settled by King Alfred in the north of England.
Dash it, said he at last, but I think you are Yorkshire too.
Man, who is the most conceited of all animals, says that he alone has the prerogative of thought, and condemns the other animals to the meaner mechanical operation which he calls instinct. But as instincts are unerring and thoughts generally go wrong, man has not much to boast of according to his own definition. When you say you think, and take it for granted, that I am Yorkshire, you err. I am not Yorkshire. Confining yourself to instinct, can you divine when we shall sup? The cows you are about to visit divine to a moment when they shall be fed.
Said the farmer, recovering his sense of superiority to the guest whom he obliged with a supper, In ten minutes. Then, after a pause, and in a tone of deprecation, as if he feared he might be thought fine, he continued, We dont sup in the kitchen. My father did, and so did I till I married; but my Bess, though shes as good a farmers wife as ever wore shoe-leather, was a tradesmans daughter, and had been brought up different. You see she was not without a good bit of money: but even if she had been, I should not have liked her folks to say I had lowered her; so we sup in the parlour.
Quoth Kenelm, The first consideration is to sup at all. Supper conceded, every man is more likely to get on in life who would rather sup in his parlour than his kitchen. Meanwhile, I see a pump; while you go to the cows I will stay here and wash my hands of them.
Hold! you seem a sharp fellow, and certainly no fool. I have a son, a good smart chap, but stuck up; crows it over us all; thinks no small beer of himself. Youd do me a service, and him too, if youd let him down a peg or two.
Kenelm, who was now hard at work at the pump-handle, only replied by a gracious nod. But as he seldom lost an opportunity for reflection, he said to himself, while he laved his face in the stream from the spout, One cant wonder why every small man thinks it so pleasant to let down a big one, when a father asks a stranger to let down his own son for even fancying that he is not small beer. It is upon that principle in human nature that criticism wisely relinquishes its pretensions as an analytical science, and becomes a lucrative profession. It relies on the pleasure its readers find in letting a man down.
CHAPTER IX
IT was a pretty, quaint farmhouse, such as might well go with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in a good-sized though low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide open, as were all the latticed windows, looking into a small garden, rich in those straggling old English flowers which are nowadays banished from gardens more pretentious and; infinitely less fragrant. At one corner was an arbour covered with honeysuckle, and opposite to it a row of beehives. The room itself had an air of comfort, and that sort of elegance which indicates the presiding genius of feminine taste. There were shelves suspended to the wall by blue ribbons, and filled with small books neatly bound; there were flower-pots in all the window-sills; there was a small cottage piano; the walls were graced partly with engraved portraits of county magnates and prize oxen; partly with samplers in worsted-work, comprising verses of moral character and the names and birthdays of the farmers grandmother, mother, wife, and daughters. Over the chimney-piece was a small mirror, and above that the trophy of a foxs brush; while niched into an angle in the room was a glazed cupboard, rich with specimens of old china, Indian and English.
The party consisted of the farmer, his wife, three buxom daughters, and a pale-faced slender lad of about twenty, the only son, who did not take willingly to farming: he had been educated at a superior grammar school, and had high notions about the March of Intellect and the Progress of the Age.