England?

LADY CAROLINE. Why do you ask?

MABEL. In Queen Elizabeth's time, wasn't it?

MATEY. He says he is all that is left of Merry England: that little
man.

MABEL (who has brothers). Lob? I think there is a famous cricketer
called Lob.

MRS. COADE. Wasn't there a Lob in Shakespeare? No, of course I am
thinking of Robin Goodfellow.

LADY CAROLINE. The names are so alike.

JOANNA. Robin Goodfellow was Puck.

MRS. COADE (with natural elation). That is what was in my head. Lob
was another name for Puck.

JOANNA. Well, he is certainly rather like what Puck might have grown
into if he had forgotten to die. And, by the way, I remember now he
does call his flowers by the old Elizabethan names.

MATEY. He always calls the Nightingale Philomel, miss--if that is any
help.

ALICE (who is not omniscient). None whatever. Tell me this, did he
specially ask you all for Midsummer week?

(They assent.)

MATEY (who might more judiciously have remained silent). He would!

MRS. COADE. Now what do you mean?

MATEY. He always likes them to be here on Midsummer night, ma'am.

ALICE. Them? Whom?

MATEY. Them who have that in common.

MABEL. What can it be?

MATEY. I don't know.

LADY CAROLINE (suddenly introspective). I hope we are all nice women?
We don't know each other very well. (Certain suspicions are reborn in
various breasts.) Does anything startling happen at those times?

MATEY. I don't know.

JOANNA. Why, I believe this is Midsummer Eve!

MATEY. Yes, miss, it is. The villagers know it. They are all inside
their houses, to-night--with the doors barred.

LADY CAROLINE. Because of--of him?

MATEY. He frightens them. There are stories.

ALICE. What alarms them? Tell us--or--(She brandishes the telegram.)

MATEY. I know nothing for certain, ma'am. I have never done it myself.
He has wanted me to, but I wouldn't.

MABEL. Done what?

MATEY (with fine appeal). Oh. ma'am, don't ask me. Be merciful to me,
ma'am. I am not bad naturally. It was just going into domestic
service that did for me; the accident of being flung among bad
companions. It's touch and go how the poor turn out in this world;
all depends on your taking the right or the wrong turning.

MRS. COADE (the lenient). I daresay that is true.

MATEY (under this touch of sun). When I was young, ma'am, I was
offered a clerkship in the city. If I had taken it there wouldn't be
a more honest man alive to-day. I would give the world to be ab