Julia and Her Romeo: A Chronicle of Castle Barfield | Page 6

her husband.
'Of course you might,' said she, with warmth, 'and that's why I'm fearful on it.'
'Fearful o' what?' demanded Samson.
'O' these here scornful fine-gentleman ways as'll be a thorn in our Joe's side as long as he lives, poor little chap, unless we put him in the way to combat again 'em.'
'Ah!' Samson growled, suddenly enlightened. 'I see now what thee beest drivin' at. Now, you take a straight sayin' from me, Mary Ann. I'll have no fine-mouthed, false-natur'd corruption i' my household. If the Reddys choose to breed up that young imp of theirn to drawl fine and to talk smooth above his station--let 'em.'
'Well, Samson,' returned Mrs. Mountain, who knew by long experience when her husband was malleable, 'you know best, and you're the master here, as it's on'y fit and becomin' an' in the rightful nature o' things as you should be.'
The first effect of the oil of flattery seemed to be to harden him.
'I be, and I mean to be,' he answered, with added surliness. 'If the speech and the clothes and the vittles as have been good enough for me ain't good enough for any young upstart as may follow after me, it is a pity.'
Mary Ann kept silence and looked meek. Samson growled and bullied a little, and wore the airs of a dictator. By and by a serving-maid came in and began to arrange the table for tea, and a little later a boy and a girl stole noiselessly into the room.
'Joe,' said Samson sternly, 'come here!' The boy approached him with evident dread. 'What's this I hear about thee and that young villin of a Reddy?'
'I don't know, father,' the boy answered.
'I heard him makin' a boast this afternoon,' said Samson, rolling bullyingly in his arm-chair, 'as you and him had fowt last holidays, and as he gi'en you a hiding.'
Joe said nothing, but looked as if he expected the experience to be repeated.
'Now, what ha' you got to say to that?' demanded his father.
'Why,' began Joe, edging back a little, 'he's bigger nor I be, an' six months o'der.'
'Do you mean to tell me,' cried Samson, reaching out a hand and seizing the little fellow by the jacket, 'do you mean to tell me as you allowed to have enough to that young villin?'
'No,' Joe protested. 'That I niver did. It was the squire as parted us.'
'You remember this,' said his father, shaking him to emphasise the promise. 'If ever you agree to tek a hiding from a Reddy you've got one to follow on from me. D'ye hear?'
'Yes, father.'
'Tek heed as well as hear. D'ye hear?'
'Yes, father.'
'And here's another thing, mind you. It's brought to me as you and him shook hands and took on to be friends with one another. Is that trew?' Joe looked guilty, but made no answer. 'Is it trew?' Still Joe returned no answer, and his father changing the hand with which he held him, for his own greater convenience, knocked him off his feet, restored him to his balance, knocked him off his feet again, and again settled him. 'Now,' said Samson, 'is it trew?'
The boy tried to recoil from the uplifted threatening hand, and cried out 'No!'
'Now,' said Samson, rising with a grim satisfaction, 'that's a lie. There's nothin' i' the world as I abhor from like a lie I'll teach thee to tell me lies. Goo into the brewus and tek thy shirt off; March!'
The little girl clung to her mother's skirts crying and trembling. The mother herself was trembling, and had turned pale.
'Hush, hush, my pretty,' she said, caressing the child, and averting her eyes from Joe.
'March!' said Samson, and Joe slunk out of the room, hardening his heart as well as might be for endurance. But when he was once out of sight of the huge bullying figure and threatening eye and hand, the sight of his cap lying upon a chair in the hall supplied him with an inspiration. He seized the cap, slipped out at the front door, and ran.
The early winter night was falling fast by this time. Half a dozen stars twinkled intermittently in the black-blue waste of sky, and when the lad paused to listen for possible sounds of pursuit the hollow moaning of the wind and the clang of bare wintry poles mingled with the noise of his own suppressed breathing.
The runaway fancied himself bound (as all British runaway boys seem bound) for sea, and he set out without delay to walk to Liverpool. He got as far as the brook which formed the limit to his father's farm, and lingering before he set foot upon the bridge, began to cry a little, and to bemoan his chances and the dear ones left behind. His father came in for none of Joe's regrets. It