must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own
any more. And those pups--what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when
they're twice as big as you? For I'm pretty sure the father was that
hulking bull-terrier of Will Baker's--wasn't he now, eh, you sly hussy?"

(Here Vixen tucked her tail between her legs and ran forward into the
house. Subjects are sometimes broached which a well-bred female will
ignore.)

"But where's the use of talking to a woman with babbies?" continued
Bartle. "She's got no conscience--no conscience; it's all run to milk."

Book Three

Chapter XXII

Going to the Birthday Feast

THE thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm
days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No
rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was
perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on
the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the
roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll
on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple,
high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor
July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in.
Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers
are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and
yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at
the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment
of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the
waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their
sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are
often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour
of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their
innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows.
But it is a time of leisure on the farm--that pause between hay-and
corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton
thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when they could
give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which
had been brewed the autumn after "the heir" was born, and was to be
tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry with the
ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one had made
haste to get th