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In the field opposite the hedges were so lined with primroses that the scent greeted you across the road. In those warm days, when school was over, and on half-holidays, Huldah took her work across to the field, and sat in the sunshine surrounded by the gold-starred hedges, where the ferns and violets and ladies' smocks fought for room, and mingled in one sweet tangle of beauty.
"I don't feel as if I wanted to `settle down. It sounds so dull! Ye can work without being so awfully proper, can't you, father? I can be a little mischievous sometimes, can't I especially on half-holidays? I'll work all the better for it afterwards. And the girls would be so disappointed if I were proper. You wouldn't believe how I liven them up.
We did not labor the same number of hours each day but took two half-holidays every week for having a royal good time under the management of the Festal Series. No one was closely confined to any of the specialized groups but, as a rule, every one found his right place and attended strictly to business therein; subject, however, to an emergency call in case of need.
So they had a very delightful 'afternoon tea' in the garden, for afternoon teas were just coming into fashion, and Rosalys and Bride walked half-way home with Celestina, parting with invitations and promises on both sides. Celestina was to spend at least half of her half-holidays at the Rectory, and Alie was to drive to Calton to fetch Mrs.
There was a good deal of wet weather during those first six weeks at Rivermouth, and we set ourselves at work to find some indoor amusement for our half-holidays. It was all very well for Amadis de Gaul and Don Quixote not to mind the rain; they had iron overcoats, and were not, from all we can learn, subject to croup and the guidance of their grandfathers. Our case was different.
Half-holidays did not necessarily preclude work in the tutor's pupil- rooms, which was preparatory to that in school, though practically the hours of recreation were never interfered with in fine weather. But after the hour of "All In," as the local phrase went, when the roll was called, and every boy had to be in for the night, an hour which varied with the time of the year, it was different.
Rhomboid's problems: my sympathetic companion in every amusement, and the pleasant drag on every intellectual effort Random, who never knew a lesson, nor could answer a question; who never could get up in time for First School, nor lay his hand on his own Virgil Random, who spent more of his half-holidays in Extra School than any boy of his day, and had acquired by long practice the power of writing the "record" number of lines in an hour; who never told a lie, nor bullied a weaker boy, nor dropped an unkind jest, nor uttered a shameful word Random, for whom every one in authority prophesied ruin, speedy and inevitable; who is, therefore, the best of landlords and the most popular of country gentlemen; who was the most popular officer in the Guards till duty called him elsewhere, and at the last election came in at the top of the poll for his native county.
All this happened at a Martinmas Fair in Bursley, long ago in the fifties, when everybody throughout the Five Towns pronounced Bursley "Bosley" as a matter of course; in the tedious and tragic old times, before it had been discovered that hell was a myth, and before the invention of pleasure or even of half-holidays.
For all such the day's work must begin either at six or seven, and close at the same hour respectively in the evening, two hours being allowed for meal-times. All Saturdays and eight other days in the year must be half-holidays, while the whole of Christmas Day and Good Friday, or two alternative days, must be allowed as holidays.
You never heard such stinking rot." "You're lucky it's Cheltenham," Jerrold said, "and not some other rotten hole. Dad and I'll go over on half-holidays and take you out. You and Anne." "You'll be at Cambridge." "Not till next year. And it isn't as if Anne wasn't there." "Grannie and Aunt Emily'll ask you every week. I've made them. It'll be a bit slow, but they're rather darlings."
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