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Page 54
The next day happened to be what they called a Wild Afternoon. Father
and Mother went out to pay calls; Miss Blake went for a ride on her
bicycle, and they were left all alone till eight o'clock.
When they had seen their dear parents and their dear preceptress
politely off the premises they got a cabbage-leaf full of raspberries
from the gardener, and a Wild Tea from Ellen. They ate the raspberries
to prevent their squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf
with Three Cows down at the Theatre, but they came across a dead
hedgehog which they simply _had_ to bury, and the leaf was too useful to
waste.
Then they went on to the Forge and found old Hobden the hedger at home
with his son, the Bee Boy, who is not quite right in his head, but who
can pick up swarms of bees in his naked hands; and the Bee Boy told them
the rhyme about the slow-worm:--
'If I had eyes _as_ I could see,
No mortal man would trouble me.'
They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobden said the loaf-cake
which Ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to
make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for
hares. They knew about rabbits already.
Then they climbed up Long Ditch into the lower end of Far Wood. This is
sadder and darker than the Volaterrae end because of an old marlpit full
of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the
willows and alders. But the birds come to perch on the dead branches,
and Hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of medicine for
sick animals.
They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech
undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had given them, when they
saw Parnesius.
'How quietly you came!' said Una, moving up to make room. 'Where's Puck?'
'The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that I should tell
you all my tale, or leave it untold,' he replied.
'I only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn't understand
it,' said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log.
'I don't understand all of it,' said Una, 'but I like hearing about the
little Picts.'
'What I can't understand,' said Dan, 'is how Maximus knew all about the
Picts when he was over in Gaul.'
'He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know everything,
everywhere,' said Parnesius. 'We had this much from Maximus's mouth
after the Games.'
'Games? What Games?' said Dan.
Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground.
'Gladiators! _That_ sort of game,' he said. 'There were two days' Games
in his honour when he landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end
of the Wall. Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days' Games;
but I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the
sand, but by Maximus. In the old days the Legions kept silence before
their Emperor. So did not we! You could hear the solid roar run West
along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds. The
garrison beat round him--clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for
change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. That
chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but
always rising again after one had shut the eyes.' Parnesius shivered.
'Were they angry with him?' said Dan.
'No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among
them. If he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased
to hold their eyes, there would have been another Emperor made on the
Wall that hour. Was it not so, Faun?'
'So it was. So it always will be,' said Puck.
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