"I cannot exist on spiritual food alone. I must have my eggs. Custom has made it necessary."

"I'll make you all sorts of nice things," she declared.

But the eccentric old beetle could not be pacified. He had eggs upon the mind. The produce of the domestic fowl had become an obsession. He explained that if the house had been well stocked with eggs he might have gone without. He would have known they were there to fall back upon if desire should seize him during the silent watches of the night. But the knowledge that the larder was dest.i.tute of eggs increased his desire. He would have no peace until the deficiency was made good.

"Well," said Boodles resignedly, "it's my fault, so I'll suffer for it.

I don't want to hear you screaming for eggs all night. I'll go and get wet for your salvation. I expect Mary can let me have some."

Weevil was himself again. He trotted off for the child's boots. He always put her boots on, and took them off when she came in. Boodles was a little sun-G.o.ddess, and as such she accepted adoration. It was part of the tribute due to the sun-like head. When the boots were on--each ankle having previously been worshipped as a part of the tribute--she a.s.sumed a jacket, packed her hair under a fluffy green hat, stabbed it on four times with long pins, picked up her walking-stick; and was off, Weevil gazing after her adoringly until she pa.s.sed out of sight. "There goes the pride o' Devon," murmured the silly old man as the green hat vanished.

The sight of Boodles took the weather's breath away. It forgot to go on raining; and the sun was so anxious to shine upon her hair that he pushed the clouds off him, as a late slumberer tosses away his blankets, and came out to work a little before evening. It became quite pleasant as Boodles went beside Tavy Cleave.

Peter was not visible, but Mary was. She was plodding about in her huge boots with an eye upon her geese, especially upon the chief of the flock. Old Sal, who, as usual, was anxious to seek pastures new. When Boodles came up Mary smiled. She was very fond of the child. Boodles seemed to have been made out of such entirely different materials from the odds and ends which had gone towards her own construction. The little girl's soft flesh was as unlike Mary's tough leather as the white bark of the birch is unlike the rugged bark of the oak.

"Well, Mary, how are you?" said Boodles.

"I be purty fine, my dear, purty middling fine. Peter be purty fine tu.

And how be yew, my dear, and how be the old gentleman? Purty fine yew be, I reckon."

"We are splendid," said Boodles. "How is the old goose, Mary?"

"Du'ye mean Old Sal, my dear? There he be trampesing 'bout Dartmoor as though 'twas his'n. Aw, he be purty fine, sure 'nuff."

"She must be very old," said Boodles.

"Aw ees, he be old. He be a cruel old artful toad, my dear," said Mary.

"How old is she?"

"Well, my dear, he be older than yew. He be twenty-two come next Michaelmas, I'm thinking."

"You will never kill her?" said Boodles. "You couldn't, after having her for so long. You won't kill her, will you, Mary?"

"Goosies was made to kill. Us keeps 'en whiles they be useful, and then us kills 'en," said Mary.

"But twenty-two years old!" cried Boodles. "She would be much too tough to eat."

"Aw, my dear life," chuckled Mary. "He wouldn't be tough. I would kill 'en, and draw 'en, and rub a little salt in his belly, and hang 'en up for a fortnight, and he would et butiful, my dear."

Boodles laughed delightfully, and said she thought no amount of salt or hanging, to say nothing of sage and onions, could ever make the venerable Sal palatable.

"Peter wun't let 'en be killed. Peter loves Old Sal," Mary went on. "He laid sixteen eggs last year, and he'm the best mother on Dartmoor. Aw ees, my dear. He be a cruel fine mother, and Peter ses he shan't die till he've a mind to."

Then Boodles got to business and asked Mary for eggs, not those of Old Sal, but the produce of the hen-house. Mary said she would go and search. As it was dirty in that region Boodles declined to go with her.

"Please to go inside. There be only Gran'vaither. Go and have a look at 'en, my dear," said Mary, who always referred to Grandfather as if he had been a living soul. "Hit 'en in the belly, and make 'en strike at ye."

Boodles went into Hut Circle Number One, which was Peter's residence, and stood in the presence of Grandfather. Obeying Mary's instructions, she hit him "in the belly." The old sinner made weird noises when thus disturbed. He appeared to resent the treatment, as most old gentlemen would have done. He refused to strike, but he rattled himself, and wheezed, and made sounds suggestive of expectoration. Grandfather was a savage like Peter. He was a rough uneducated sort of clock, and he had no pa.s.sion for Boodles. Pendoggat would have been the man for him.

Grandfather would have shaken hands with Pendoggat had it been possible.

His own quivering hands were stretched across his lying face, announcing quarter-past nine when it was really five o'clock. Grandfather was a true man of Devon. He had no sense of time.

Boodles had nothing but contertipt for the old fellow. Having a.s.saulted him she opened his case. Evidently Grandfather had been drinking. His interior smelt strongly of cider. There were splashes of it everywhere; rank cider distilled from the lees; in one spot moisture was p.r.o.nounced, suggesting that Grandfather had recently been indulging. Apparently he liked his liquor strong. Grandfather was a picker-up of unconsidered trifles also. He was full of pins; all kinds of pins, bent and straight.

Item, Grandfather had a little money of his own; several battered coppers, some green coins which had no doubt been dug up outside, or discovered upon the "deads" beside one of the neighbouring wheals, and there was a real fourpenny-bit with a hole through it. Fastened to the back of the case behind the pendulum was a sc.r.a.p of sheepskin as hard as wood, and upon it some hand had painfully drawn what appeared to be an elementary exercise in geometry. Boodles frowned and wondered what it all meant.

"Here be the eggs, my dear. Twenty for a shillun to yew, and ten to a foreigner," said Mary, standing in the door, making an ap.r.o.n out of her ragged skirt, and blissfully unconscious that she was exposing the sack-like bloomers which were her only underwear.

"Twenty-one, Mary. There's always one thrown in for luck and me,"

pleaded Boodles.

"Aw ees. One for yew, my dear," Mary a.s.sented.

That was the way Boodles got full value for her money.

"My dear life! What have yew been a-doing of?" cried Mary with alarm, when she noticed Grandfather's open case. "Aw, my dear, yew didn't ought to meddle wi' he. Grandfather gets cruel tedious if he be meddled with."

"I was only looking at his insides," said Boodles. "He's a regular old rag-bag. What are all these things for--pins, coins, coppers? And he's splashed all over with cider. No wonder he won't keep time."

"Shet 'en up, my dear. Shet 'en up," said superst.i.tious Mary. "Aw, my dear, don't ye ever meddle wi' religion. If Peter was to see ye he'd be took wi' shivers. Let Gran'vaither bide, du'ye. Ain't ye got a pin to give 'en? My dear life, I'll fetch ye one. Gran'vaither got tedious wi'

volks wance, Peter ses, and killed mun; ees, my dear, killed mun dead as door nails; ees, fie 'a did, killed mun stark."

Boodles only laughed, like the wicked maid that she was. She couldn't be bothered with the niceties of religion.

Peter and Mary were only savages. According to their creed pixies dwelt in Grandfather's bosom; and it was necessary to retain the good-will of the little people, and render the sting of their possible malevolence harmless, by presenting votive offerings and inscribing spells. The rank cider had been provided for midnight orgies, and, lest the pixies should become troublesome when under the influence of liquor, the charm upon the sheepskin had been introduced, like a stringent police-notice, compelling them to keep the peace.

"It's all nonsense, you know," said Boodles, as she took the eggs, with the sun flaming across her hair. "The pixies are all dead. I went to the funeral of the last one."

Mary shook her head. She did not jest on serious matters. The friendship of the pixies was as much to her as the lack of eggs had been to Weevil.

"Anyhow," went on wicked Boodles, "I should put rat-poison in there if they worried me."

"Us have been bit and scratched by 'em in bed," Mary declared. "Peter and me have been bit cruel. Us could see the marks of their teeth."

"Did you ever catch one?" asked Boodles tragically.

"Catch mun! Aw, my dear life! Us can't catch mun."

"You could, if you were quick--before they hopped," laughed Boodles.

CHAPTER V

ABOUT THOMASINE

Thomasine sat in the kitchen of Town Rising, sewing. It was a dreary place, and she was alone and surrounded with stone. The kitchen walls were stone; so was the floor. The window looked out upon the court, and that was paved with stone. Beyond was the barn wall, made of blocks of cold granite. Above peeped the top of a tor, and that was granite too.

Damp stone everywhere. It was the Stone Age back again. And Thomasine, buried among it all, was making herself a frivolous petticoat for Tavistock Goose Fair.