His mind reverted to Giles's party, and when they were nearly home he
spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: "It is hardly
the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she's been
accustomed to. I didn't foresee that in sending her to boarding-school
and letting her travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for
Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, 'tis a thousand
pities! But he ought to have her--he ought!"
At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really
finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear,
vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to
the same in far-reaching strides-"She may go, oh!
She may go, oh!
She may go to the d---- for me!"
The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. "That's the
sort of society we've been asked to meet," he said. "For us old folk
it didn't matter; but for Grace--Giles should have known better!"
Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared
out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room
surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic
feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered the bakehouse,
and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in
contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him.
"Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd better get on to bed."
"Ay, ay, Giles--what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But 'tis well
to think the day IS done, when 'tis done."
Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled
forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till
it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about
everywhere. "Do you think it went off well, Creedle?" he asked.
"The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly
believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink
'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries
could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung
down, leaving out the spice and sperrits I put into it, while that
egg-flip would ha' passed through muslin, so little curdled 'twere.
'Twas good enough to make any king's heart merry--ay, to make his whole
carcass smile. Still, I don't deny I'm afeared some things didn't go
well with He and his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified
where the Melburys lived.