recommence their play, so he alighted and delivered the first ball, and
then walked away with my hand in his, saying:

'Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you.
The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I
last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And now to
see the bed you have slept in.'

Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and
a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.

'Ha!' said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: 'madam, I am
your life-long debtor and friend!' He kissed her on the cheek.

John Thresher cried out: 'Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.'

She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our
departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering
crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great
gun. 'A royal salvo!' said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I
had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my
friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true,
until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view of
the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my
playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on
Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story.
She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb
that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and kept looking so,
but would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look
when I had forgotten that of all the others.