He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration
of the performance described. As with Farinelli's singing before the
princesses, Sheridan's renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples,
the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested
the deceased Mr. Yeobright's tour de force on that memorable afternoon
with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been
possible, might considerably have shorn down.

"He was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of life,"
said Humphrey.

"Ah, well; he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. At
that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill
Fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid,
hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a
good, runner afore she got so heavy. When she came home I said--we were
then just beginning to walk together--'What have ye got, my honey?'
'I've won--well, I've won--a gown-piece,' says she, her colours coming
up in a moment. 'Tis a smock for a crown, I thought; and so it turned
out. Ay, when I think what she'll say to me now without a mossel of red
in her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing
then....However, then she went on, and that's what made me bring up the
story. Well, whatever clothes I've won, white or figured, for eyes to
see or for eyes not to see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in
those days), 'I'd sooner have lost it than have seen what I have. Poor
Mr. Yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was
forced to go home again.' That was the last time he ever went out of the
parish."

"'A faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone."