The Yeoman Adventurer | Page 2

stirring deed of arms
available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming inwardly with thoughts
of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's. Mother should go. For her
it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the better under her quiet,
seeing eyes.
"Well then," said Kate, "grump at home over your beastly Virgil."
Mother, who understood as only mothers can, said nothing, and
prepared my favourite dishes for dinner.
The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more
than the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best
fripperies and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I
stood in the porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along
the road till they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge.
Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search
high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in
yellowing parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and
would have flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint
inscription on the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting:
"KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book, God give her grease to larn to
cook.
At the Hanyards. Jul. 1739."
The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate
was no scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little
world than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the
dainties and devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did
not soon learn to do something well, even were it only how to farm my
five hundred acres to a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the
miraculous aid suggested in her unintentional and, to me, biting
epigram. I put the book down, and gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It
would probably be useless in any case, since Kate had a cunning all her
own, and had surely bestowed it far beyond any searching of mine. I
contented myself with a fair reprisal, stowing a stray ribbon of hers in

my breeches' pocket, and sat down to smoke. My pipe would not draw,
and I smashed it in trying to make it.
The tall oak clock tick-tocked on in the house-place, and Jane sang on
at her churning in the dairy across the yard. I sat gazing at the fire,
where I could see nothing but Jack Dobson in his martial grandeur, and
I hated him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All
the same it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs
tiptoeing carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have
been patching a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was,
foraging for a jug of ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could
snare a rabbit, but I would scarify him out of his five senses, the hulk.
The singing stopped, and then the churning, and five minutes later I
crept up to the kitchen door, which was ajar. There was my lord Joe, a
jug of ale in hand, his free arm round Jane's neck. How endurable these
two found life at the Hanyards! I caught a fragment of their gossip.
"Be there such things as rale quanes, Jin?"
"Of course," she replied. "There's pictures of 'em in one of Master
Noll's books. Crowns on their yeds, too."
"There's one on 'em down 'tour house, Jin, but she ain't got no crown.
But bless thee, wench, I'd sooner kiss thee than look at fifty quanes."
Jane yelped as I murdered an incipient kiss by knocking the jug out of
his hand across the kitchen, but in kicking him out of doors I tripped
over a bucket of water, and about half a score fine dace flopped
miserably on the wet floor.
"Dunna carry on a' that'n, Master Noll," said Joe. "I only com' up t'ouse
to bring you them daceys."
"And what the devil do I want with them?" said I angrily.
Joe knew me. He said, "There's a jack as big as a gate-post in that 'ole
between the reeds along th' 'igh bonk."

He saw the cock of my eye, and went on: "I saw 'im this mornin', an'
'eard 'im. 'E made a splosh like a sack o' taters droppin' off the bridge.
So I just copped 'e a few daceys, thinkin' as you'd be sure to go after
'im."
"Put them in some fresh water, Joe, and you, Jane, fill him another jug.
I'll own up to Mistress Kate for smashing the other."
I fetched my rod and tackle, picked up the bucket of dace, and set off
across the fields to the river. The bank nearer the house, and