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Updated: June 17, 2025
Wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once. "That's a drop of the right sort, I can see," said Grandfer Cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it. "Yes," said Wildeve, "'tis some old mead. I hope you will like it."
"A fair stave, Grandfer Cantle; but I am afeard 'tis too much for the mouldy weasand of such a old man as you," he said to the wrinkled reveller. "Dostn't wish th' wast three sixes again, Grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to sing it?" "Hey?" said Grandfer Cantle, stopping in his dance. "Dostn't wish wast young again, I say? There's a hole in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly."
Come hither, grandfer," and he beckoned to the old man who had bidden them wait his return, "tell me the names of the men who have been longest without any work." The old man pointed out three, and then Havelok stopped him. "One of these loaves is my own wage," he said; "but you three shall have the others, and that will be the easiest day's work you ever did.
"I suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest fool afore," said Fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing it with his breath. "D'ye think so, Timothy?" said Grandfer Cantle, coming forward to Fairway's side with sudden depression in his face. "Then a man may feel for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himself after all?"
Across the stout oak table in the middle of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer Cantle held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other, while Fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour. "Waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer. "Yes, Sam," said Grandfer Cantle, as a man too busy to waste words.
Standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the Egdon coterie, there being present Fairway himself, Grandfer Cantle, Humphrey, Christian, and one or two turf-cutters.
"That's my age by baptism, because that's put down in the great book of the Judgment that they keep in church vestry; but mother told me I was born some time afore I was christened." "Ah!" "But she couldn't tell when, to save her life, except that there was no moon." "No moon: that's bad. Hey, neighbours, that's bad for him!" "Yes, 'tis bad," said Grandfer Cantle, shaking his head.
"I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Christian," said Grandfer Cantle severely. "You might have been the son of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End in his life for all the wit you have. Really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son.
The young men were not slow to imitate the example of their elders, and seized the maids; Grandfer Cantle and his stick jigged in the form of a three-legged object among the rest; and in half a minute all that could be seen on Rainbarrow was a whirling of dark shapes amid a boiling confusion of sparks, which leapt around the dancers as high as their waists.
Wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once. "That's a drop of the right sort, I can see," said Grandfer Cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it. "Yes," said Wildeve, "'tis some old mead. I hope you will like it."
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