For the convenience of Foxearth Farm, as well as of Will, who, though a bit sulky about his mother’s waiting on the Showman, was too entangled with Miss Purley to refuse to grace the festal board, the ceremony had been fixed for a Saturday at ten, and on that morning Jinny had meant to rise with the sun, so as to do the bulk of her day’s chares in advance. What was her dismay, therefore, to open blinking eyes on her grandfather standing over her pseudo-bed in his best Sunday smock, whip in hand, and to hear through her wide-flung casement Methusalem neighing outside and the cart creaking!

“Am I late?” she gasped, sitting up. Then she became aware of a beautiful blue moonlight filling the room with glory, and of a lambent loveliness spreading right up to the stars sprinkled over her slit of sky.

“’Tis your wedding-day, dearie,” said the ghostly figure of the Gaffer, and she now perceived there were wedding favours on his whip, evidently taken from Methusalem’s May Day ribbons, which he must have hunted out of the “glory-hole” where odds and ends were kept.

Bitterly she regretted having excited his brain by informing him of her programme. He was evidently prepared to drive her to the ceremony.

“But it’s too early,” she temporized.

“Ye’ve got to be there for breakfus, you said, dearie,” he reminded her.

“No, no,” she explained. “The wedding breakfast with fashionable folk is only a sort of bever or elevener at earliest.”

He chuckled. “Ye’re gooin’ to be rich and fashionable—won’t it wex that jackanips! Oi suspicioned ’twas you he war arter the fust time he come gawmin’ to the stable. Ye can’t deceive Daniel Quarles. On your hands and knees, ye pirate thief!” He cracked his whip fiercely. “Up ye git, Jinny, ye’ve got to titivate yerself. Oi’ve put the water in your basin.”

“But Gran’fer,” she said, acutely distressed, “it’s not my wedding.”

“Not your wedding!”

“Of course not.”

“Then whose wedding be it?” he demanded angrily. “’Tain’t mine, seein’ as Oi’m too poor to keep Annie though she’s riddy of her rascal at last.” He seized her wrists and shook her. “Why did you lie to me and make a fool o’ me?”

So this was why Gran’fer had embraced her so effusively last night when she avowed her programme for the morrow; this was why he had given her blessings in lieu of the expected reproaches for her projected absence; this was why he had gone up to bed humming his long-silent song: “Oi’m seventeen come Sunday.”

It was a mistake, she felt now, to have stayed at home for his sake on the Friday, changing the immemorial day of absence. He had been strange all day, without grasping what was the cause of his unrest, and Nip’s parallel uneasiness had reacted upon him. It was not, however, till she had incautiously remarked that Methusalem too was off his feed, that he cried out in horror that she had forgotten to go on her rounds. Smilingly she assured him she had not forgotten: indeed the void in her whole being occasioned by the loss of Mother Gander’s gratis meal had been a gnawing reminder since midday. But imagining—and not indeed untruly—that her work was gone, he had burst into imprecations on “the pirate thief.”

As she sat up now on her mattress, helpless in her grief, her mind raced feverishly through the episode, recalling every word of the dialogue, unravelling his senile misapprehension; half wilful it seemed to her now, in his eagerness to clutch at happier times.

“It’s nothing to do with the coach competition, Gran’fer. It’s only because I’ve got to be out to-morrow for a wedding!”

“A wedding! She ain’t marrying agen?”

“Who?”

“Annie.”

“Annie? Which Annie?”

“There’s onny one Annie. ’Lijah’s mother.”

“Old Mrs. Skindle! What an idea! It’s a friend of mine, a gentleman you’ve never seen.”

At this point she had had, she remembered, the fatal idea of showing him her furbished-up frock to soothe him, for he was trembling all over.

“Would you like to see what I’m going to wear?”

She understood now the new light that had shot into his eye as he touched the lace trimming.

“Similar-same to what your Great-Aunt Susannah wore the day she married that doddy little Dap! Ye ain’t a-gooin’ to make a fool o’ yerself similar-same. Who’s the man?” he had demanded fiercely.

“You don’t know him, I told you—it’s a Mr. Flippance!”

A beautiful peace had come over the convulsed face. “Flippance! Ain’t that the gent what’s come to live in Frog Farm? That’s a fust-class toff, no mistake. Uncle Lilliwhyte should be tellin’ me, when he come with the watercress on Tuesday, as Mr. Flippance pays a pound a week for hisself alone!”

That was the point at which her grandfather had kissed her with effusion, crying: “Ye’ll be in clover, dearie!” while she, licking her chaps at the thought of the morrow’s banquet, had playfully answered that there would certainly be “a mort to eat.” The prospect set him clucking gleefully.

“Spite o’ that rapscallion!” he had chuckled, enlarging thereupon to her on the way the Lord protects His righteous subjects, and enlivening his discourse with adjurations to “the pirate thief” to take to his hands and knees. Had followed reproaches for hiding the news from him, reproaches to Mr. Flippance for not calling on him, not even inviting him to the wedding: soothing explanations from her that Mr. Flippance knew he was too poorly to go that far; assurances she would be back as early as possible.

She ought to have understood his delusion or self-delusion, she thought, when he had clung to her in a sudden panic.

“Then ye will come back—ye ain’t leavin’ me to starve! Ye won’t let that jackanips starve me out?”

And when she had reassured him, and caressed him, even promised to bring him something tasty from the wedding breakfast, he had gripped her harder than ever—she could still feel his bony fingers on her wrist—but of course they actually were on her wrists as she sat there now against her pillow—“ye’ll live here with me—same as afore!”

“Why ever shouldn’t I?” she had answered in her innocence. “We’ll always live with you—Methusalem, Nip, all of us.” What unlucky impulse of affection or reassurance had made her stoop down to kiss the dog in his basket—all her being burnt with shame at the remembrance of her grandfather’s reply, though at the time it had touched her to tears.

“God bless ye, Jinny. Oi know this ain’t a proper bedroom for you, but Oi’ll sleep here if you like, and do you and he move up to mine.”

She had put by the offer gently. “Nonsense, Gran’fer. You can’t shift at your age—or Nip either.”

“Oi bain’t so old as Sidrach,” he had retorted, not without resentment, “and Oi doubt he ain’t left off bein’ a rollin’ stone. And Oi reckon Oi can fit into that chest of drawers better than when Oi was bonkka.”

But the shrivelled form, with the hollow cheeks, flaming eyes, and snowy beard, was still shaking her angrily, and her sense of his pathos vanished in a sick fear, not so much for herself, though his fingers seemed formidably sinister, as for his aged brain under this disappointment. “Why did you say ’twas your wedding morn?”

The Dutch clock, providentially striking three, offered a fresh chance of temporizing.

“There, Gran’fer! Can’t be my wedding morn yet, only three o’clock!”

He let go her hands. “Ain’t ye ashamed to have fun with your Gran’fer?” he asked, vastly relieved. “But it’s a middlin’ long drive to Chipstone before breakfus.”

“It’s not at Chipstone—the wedding’s at Little Bradmarsh.”

“Oh!” he said blankly.

“So there’s lots of time, Gran’fer, and you can go back to bed.”

“Not me! Do, Oi mightn’t wake in time agen.”

“I’ll wake you—but I’ll be fit for nothing in the morning, if I don’t go to sleep now.”

“The day Oi was married,” he chuckled, “Oi never offered to sleep the noight afore—ne yet the noight arter! He, he!”

“Go away, Gran’fer!” she begged frantically. “Let me go to sleep.”

“Ay, ay, goo to sleep, my little mavis. Nobody shan’t touch ye. What a pity we ate up that wedding-cake! But Oi had to cut a shiver to stop his boggin’ and crakin’, hadn’t Oi, dearie?”

“Quite right. Better eat wedding-cake than humble-pie!” she jested desperately.

“Ef he comes sniffin’ around arter you’re married, Oi’ll snap him in two like this whip!”

“Don’t break my whip!” She clutched at the beribboned butt.

“That’s my whip, Jinny! Let that go!”

“Well, go to bed then!” With a happy thought, she lit the tallow candle on her bedside chair and tendered it to him. It operated as mechanically upon his instinctive habits as she had hoped.

“Good night, dearie,” he said, and very soon she heard him undressing as usual, and his snore came with welcome rapidity. Then she sprang out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and ran out to release the angry and mystified Methusalem from the shafts and to receive his nuzzled forgiveness in the stable. But when she got back to bed, sleep long refused to come; the sense of her tragic situation was overwhelming. Even the great peace of the moonlit night could not soak into her. It was impossible to go to the wedding now, she felt. When at last sleep came, she was again incomprehensibly Queen Victoria hemmed in by foes, and protected only by “The Father of the Fatherless” with his black whiskers. She awoke about dawn, unrefreshed and hungry, but a cold sponging from the basin her grandfather had prepared enabled her to cope with the labours of the day. She looked forward with apprehension to the scene with the old man when he should realize that the grand match was indeed off, but she could think of nothing better than going about in her dirtiest apron to keep his mind off the subject. The precaution proved unnecessary. He slept so late and so heavily—as if a weight was off his mind—that when he at last awoke he seemed to have slept the delusion off, as though it were something too recent to remain in his memory. As for the scene in the small hours, that had apparently left no impress at all upon his brain. In fact, so jocose and natural was he at breakfast, which she purposely made prodigal for him, that the optimism of the morning sun, which came streaming in, almost banished her own memory of it too: it seemed as much a nightmare as her desperate struggle against the foes of Victoria-Jinny. The lure of the wedding jaunt revived, and the thought of the domestic economy she would be achieving thereby, made her sparing of her own breakfast. She had a bad moment, however, when her grandfather suddenly caught sight of the horseless cart outside.

“Stop thief!” he cried, jumping up agitatedly.

Jinny was vexed with herself. To have left that reminder of the grotesque episode!

“It’s that ’Lijah!” he shrieked. “He’s stole Methusalem.”

“Hush, Gran’fer!” she warned him. “Suppose anybody heard you!”

But he ran out towards the Common and she after him. His tottering limbs seemed galvanized.

“My horse is all right,” she gasped, catching him up in a few rods. “I was too tired yesterday to put my cart away, that’s all.”

He turned and glared suspiciously at her. “That’s my hoss—and my cart, too! Can’t you read the name—‘Daniel Quarles, Carrier.’ But ye won’t never let me put no padlock on my stable!”

“Your horse is there safe—come and see!”

He allowed himself to be led to the soothing spectacle.

“But Oi’ll put a padlock at once, same as in my barn,” he said firmly. “Don’t, that rascal ’Lijah will grab him without tippin’ a farden!”