cousin Tom set to, and told us whole pages of stories, not about his own
doings at all, but strangely enough they seemed to concern almost every
one else we had ever heard of. Without halting once for a word or a
deed, his tales flowed onward as freely and brightly as the flames of
the wood up the chimney, and with no smaller variety. For he spoke with
the voices of twenty people, giving each person the proper manner, and
the proper place to speak from; so that Annie and Lizzie ran all about,
and searched the clock and the linen-press. And he changed his face
every moment so, and with such power of mimicry that without so much as
a smile of his own, he made even mother laugh so that she broke her new
tenpenny waistband; and as for us children, we rolled on the floor, and
Betty Muxworthy roared in the wash-up.



CHAPTER XII

A MAN JUSTLY POPULAR

Now although Mr. Faggus was so clever, and generous, and celebrated,
I know not whether, upon the whole, we were rather proud of him as a
member of our family, or inclined to be ashamed of him. And indeed I
think that the sway of the balance hung upon the company we were in. For
instance, with the boys at Brendon--for there is no village at Oare--I
was exceeding proud to talk of him, and would freely brag of my Cousin
Tom. But with the rich parsons of the neighbourhood, or the justices
(who came round now and then, and were glad to ride up to a warm
farm-house), or even the well-to-do tradesmen of Porlock--in a word, any
settled power, which was afraid of losing things--with all of them we
were very shy of claiming our kinship to that great outlaw.