His comrades nodded.

'Ay, my lady is a walking weariness. I seed her yawn just at the
very moment when the fox was halloaed away by Lornton Copse, and the
hounds runned en all but past her carriage wheels. If I were she
I'd see a little life; though there's no fair, club-walking, nor
feast to speak of, till Easter week,--that's true.'

'She dares not. She's under solemn oath to do no such thing.'

'Be cust if I would keep any such oath! But here's the pa'son, if
my ears don't deceive me.'

There was a noise of horse's hoofs without, a stumbling against the
door-scraper, a tethering to the window-shutter, a creaking of the
door on its hinges, and a voice which Swithin recognized as Mr.
Torkingham's. He greeted each of the previous arrivals by name, and
stated that he was glad to see them all so punctually assembled.

'Ay, sir,' said Haymoss Fry. ''Tis only my jints that have kept me
from assembling myself long ago. I'd assemble upon the top of
Welland Steeple, if 'tweren't for my jints. I assure ye, Pa'son
Tarkenham, that in the clitch o' my knees, where the rain used to
come through when I was cutting clots for the new lawn, in old my
lady's time, 'tis as if rats wez gnawing, every now and then. When
a feller's young he's too small in the brain to see how soon a
constitution can be squandered, worse luck!'

'True,' said Biles, to fill the time while the parson was engaged in