stood beside her a stout, black-eyed, round-faced lad, his ruddy
cheeks and loutish air showing more rusticity than agreed with his
keen, saucy expression, and mechanic's dress.

'So that's what you call beating a mat,' said he, catching it from
her hands, and mimicking the tender clasp of her little fingers.
'D'ye think it's alive, that you use it so gingerly? Look here!
Give it him well!' as he made it resound against the tree, and emit a
whirlwind of dust. 'Lay it into him with some jolly good song fit to
fetch a stroke home with! Why, I heard my young Lord say, when
Shakspeare was a butcher, he used to make speeches at the calves, as
if they was for a sacrifice, or ever he could lift a knife to 'em.'

'Shakspeare! He as wrote Romeo and Juliet, and all that! He a
butcher! Why, he was a poet!' cried the girl, indignantly.

'If you know better than Lord Fitzjocelyn, you may!' said the boy.

'I couldn't have thought it!' sighed the maiden.

'It's the best of it!' cried the lad, eagerly. 'Why, Charlotte,
don't ye see, he rose hisself. Anybody may rise hisself as has a
mind to it!'

'Yes, I've read that in books said Charlotte. 'You can, men can,
Tom, if you would but educate yourself like Edmund! in the _Old
English Baron_. But then, you know whose son you are. There can't
be no catastrophe--'

'I don't want none,' said Tom. 'We are all equal by birth, so the