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Why, here; Hal telled me thou wert dead, or lost, or some such fairy tale! Up on the sheepskin, both o' ye!" The Dutchman came from the tap-room door and spoke to the tapster's knave; but the words which he spoke to that tapster's knave were anything but Dutch. At Kensington watering-place, five miles from London town, Nick held the pail for the horses of the Oxford man.
He spent the afternoon exploring the premises of the Potwell Inn and learning the duties that might be expected of him, such as Stockholm tarring fences, digging potatoes, swabbing out boats, helping people land, embarking, landing and time-keeping for the hirers of two rowing boats and one Canadian canoe, baling out the said vessels and concealing their leaks and defects from prospective hirers, persuading inexperienced hirers to start down stream rather than up, repairing rowlocks and taking inventories of returning boats with a view to supplementary charges, cleaning boots, sweeping chimneys, house-painting, cleaning windows, sweeping out and sanding the tap and bar, cleaning pewter, washing glasses, turpentining woodwork, whitewashing generally, plumbing and engineering, repairing locks and clocks, waiting and tapster's work generally, beating carpets and mats, cleaning bottles and saving corks, taking into the cellar, moving, tapping and connecting beer casks with their engines, blocking and destroying wasps' nests, doing forestry with several trees, drowning superfluous kittens, and dog-fancying as required, assisting in the rearing of ducklings and the care of various poultry, bee-keeping, stabling, baiting and grooming horses and asses, cleaning and "garing" motor cars and bicycles, inflating tires and repairing punctures, recovering the bodies of drowned persons from the river as required, and assisting people in trouble in the water, first-aid and sympathy, improvising and superintending a bathing station for visitors, attending inquests and funerals in the interests of the establishment, scrubbing floors and all the ordinary duties of a scullion, the ferry, chasing hens and goats from the adjacent cottages out of the garden, making up paths and superintending drainage, gardening generally, delivering bottled beer and soda water syphons in the neighbourhood, running miscellaneous errands, removing drunken and offensive persons from the premises by tact or muscle as occasion required, keeping in with the local policemen, defending the premises in general and the orchard in particular from depredators....
Tapster's sense of what was seemly, was gone; her fair hair had all come down, and hung in pale-gold wisps about the face already fixed in the soft dignity which seems so soon to drape the features of those who die by drowning. Her widely opened eyes were now wholly emptied of the anguish with which they had gazed on Mr. Tapster in this very room less than an hour ago.
Tapster's sons was six, and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named, unfortunately, Flora, after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day.
Tapster's sister-in-law now interfered only where his children were concerned. Never having been herself a mother, she had, of course, been able to form a clear and unprejudiced judgment as to how children, and especially as to how little boys, should be physically and mentally trained.
He had crossed the inn-yard suddenly, and was sitting close within the shadow of the wall, though the sunny side was pleasanter by far. His wig was hanging down about his face, and he was talking with the tapster's knave, a hungry-looking fellow clad in rusty black as if some one were dead, although it was a holiday and he had neither kith nor kin.
The drivers made a cracking with their whips, and all the guests came out to see them off. But the Dutchman, as the rest came out, arose, and with the tapster's knave went in at a narrow entrance beyond the tap-room steps. "And when will Master Shakspere come for thee?" asked Cicely once more, the cold pie lying in her lap. "I do na know. How can I tell?
To look on thee now, and compare thee with Master Tressilian here, in his sad-coloured riding-suit, who would not say that thou wert the real gentleman and he the tapster's boy?" "Troth, uncle," replied Lambourne, "no one would say so but one of your country-breeding, that knows no better.
"They come from the servants' quarters," said Tapster. There came a sudden silence, and then an awful crash. "How long have these noises gone on?" asked Panton. He had put on his dressing-gown, and was now looking for his slippers. "Oh, for a long time." Tapster's hand was trembling, partly from excitement, partly from fear. "How d'you account for it?" he asked.
So homewards and to the Cross Keys at Cripplegate, where I find all the towne almost going out of towne, the coaches and waggons being all full of people going into the country. Here I had some of the company of the tapster's wife a while, and so home to my office, and then home to supper and to bed. 22nd.
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