Chapter V.


Of the Man with the Drooping Lids

My mother and my father were sitting in their high-backed chairs on
either side of the empty fireplace when we arrived, he smoking his
evening pipe of Oronooko, and she working at her embroidery. The moment
that I opened the door the man whom I had brought stepped briskly in,
and bowing to the old people began to make glib excuses for the lateness
of his visit, and to explain the manner in which we had picked him up.
I could not help smiling at the utter amazement expressed upon my
mother's face as she gazed at him, for the loss of his jack-boots
exposed a pair of interminable spindle-shanks which were in ludicrous
contrast to the baggy low country knee-breeches which surmounted them.
His tunic was made of coarse sad-coloured kersey stuff with flat new
gilded brass buttons, beneath which was a whitish callamanca vest edged
with silver. Round the neck of his coat was a broad white collar after
the Dutch fashion, out of which his long scraggy throat shot upwards
with his round head and bristle of hair balanced upon the top of it,
like the turnip on a stick at which we used to throw at the fairs. In
this guise he stood blinking and winking in the glare of light, and
pattering out his excuses with as many bows and scrapes as Sir Peter
Witling in the play. I was in the act of following him into the room,
when Reuben plucked at my sleeve to detain me.

'Nay, I won't come in with you, Micah,' said he; 'there's mischief
likely to come of all this. My father may grumble over his beer jugs,
but he's a Churchman and a Tantivy for all that. I'd best keep out of
it.'