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Page 8
"Why, what fancies! Let us go into the yard, and see the shearing.
You've made me feel as if I'd never like to pull a posy again. You
shouldn't say such things, indeed you shouldn't: you've given me quite a
turn, I'm sure."
As Ducie talked, they went through the back-door into a large yard
walled in from the hillside, and having in it three grand old sycamores.
One of these was at the top of the enclosure, and a circle of green
shadow like a tent was around it. In this shadow the squire and the
statesman were sitting. Their heads were uncovered, their long clay
pipes in their hands; and, with a placid complacency, they were watching
the score of busy men before them. Many had come long distances to try
their skill against each other; for the shearings at Latrigg's were a
pastoral game, at which it was a local honor to be the winner. There the
young statesman who could shear his six score a day found others of a
like capacity, and it was Greek against Greek at Up-Hill shearing that
afternoon.
"I had two thousand sheep to get over," said Latrigg, "but they'll be
bare by sunset, squire. That isn't bad for these days. When I was young
we wouldn't have thought so much of two thousand, but every dalesman
then knew what good shearing was. _Now_," and the old man shook his head
slowly, "good shearers are few and far between. Why, there's some here
from beyond Kirkstone Pass and Nab Scar!"
It was customary for young people of all conditions to give men as aged
as Barf Latrigg the honorable name of "grandfather;" and Charlotte said,
as she sat down in the breezy shadow beside him, "Who is first,
grandfather?"
"Why, our Stephen, to be sure! They'll have to be up before day-dawn to
keep sidey with our Steve.--Steve, how many is thou ahead now?" The
voice that asked the question, though full of triumph, was thin and
weak; but the answer came back in full, mellow tones,--
"Fifteen ahead, grandfather."
"Oh, I'm so glad!"
"Charlotte Sandal says 'she's so glad.' Now then, if thou loses ground,
I wouldn't give a ha'penny for thee."
Then the women who were folding the fleeces on tables under the other
two sycamores lifted their eyes, and glanced at Steve; and some of the
elder ones sent him a merry jibe, and some of the younger ones, smiles,
that made his brown handsome face deepen in color; but he was far too
earnest in his work to spare a moment for a reply. By and by, the squire
put down his pipe, and sat watching with his hands upon his knees. And a
stray child crept up to Charlotte, and climbed upon her lap, and went to
sleep there, and the wind flecked these four representatives of four
generations all over with wavering shadows; and Ducie came backwards and
forwards, and finally carried the sleeping child into the house; and
Stephen, busy as he was, saw every thing that went on in the group under
the top sycamore.
Even before sundown, the last batch of sheep were fleeced and
_smitten_,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a
mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte,
leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell,
with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather and the squire had
gone into the house; Ducie was calling her from the open door; she knew
it was tea-time, and she was young and healthy and hungry enough to be
glad of it.
At the table she met Stephen. The strong, bare-armed Hercules, whom she
had watched tossing the sheep around for his shears as easily as if they
had been kittens under his hands, was now dressed in a handsome tweed
suit, and looking quite as much of a gentleman as the most fastidious
maiden could desire. He came in after the meal had begun, flushed
somewhat with his hard labor, and perhaps, also, with the hurry of his
toilet; but there was no embarrassment in his manner. It had never yet
entered Stephen's mind that there was any occasion for embarrassment,
for the friendship between the squire's family and his own had been
devoid of all sense of inequality. The squire was "the squire," and was
perhaps richer than Latrigg, but even that fact was uncertain; and the
Sandals had been to court, and married into county families; but then
the Latriggs had been for exactly seven hundred years the neighbors of
Sandal,--good neighbors, shoulder to shoulder with them in every trial
or emergency.
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