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Updated: June 10, 2025
Marius Longford were anywhere visible. Old Josey Letherbarrow sat in his usual corner, everything was precisely the same as it was wont to be and yet a sense of vague trouble oppressed him, he saw, or thought he saw, an expression on some of the faces of his parishioners which was new to him, and he felt instinctively that some disturbing element had found its way into the peace of the village, though what the trouble could be, he was at a loss to imagine.
A slow smile was reflected on the faces of the persons who heard this story, a smile that implied lurking doubt as to whether it was quite the correct or respectful thing to find entertainment in an anecdote which included a description of 'the purtiest little legs' of the lady of the Manor whose return to her native home was so soon expected, but Josey Letherbarrow was a privileged personage, and he might say what others dared not.
Letherbarrow has been saying that he has not seen you lately, Miss Vancourt, not since your friends came down. He seems to miss you very much." Maryllia, swaying lightly in her saddle, stooped over her mare's neck and patted it, to hide sudden tears that sprang, she knew not why, to her eyes. "Poor Josey!" she said "I'm sorry!
So the harmless chatter among the village folks went on, and the feasting, dancing and singing lasted long. Chief of important personages among all that gathered under the old beech-trees was Josey Letherbarrow, very feeble, very dim of eye, but stout of heart and firm of opinion as ever.
But Hippolyta was a person evidently accustomed to have her own way, and she ran straight up to Josey Letherbarrow as though he were the one choice hero picked out of a world. "Zozey!" she screamed, stretching out a pair of short, mottled arms; "My own bootiful Zozey-posey! Tum and pick fowers!" With an ecstatic shriek at nothing in particular, she caught the edge of the old man's smock.
Noble creatures were they in their splendid girth and broadly-stretching branches, which were now all alive with the palest and prettiest young green, and as Walden sprang up the thyme-scented turfy ascent which lifted them proudly above all their compeers, his heart beat with mingled indignation and gladness, indignation that such grand creations of a bountiful Providence should ever have been so much as threatened with annihilation by a destructive, ill-conditioned human pigmy like Oliver Leach, and gladness, that at the last moment their safety was assured through the intervention of old Josey Letherbarrow.
And Josey Letherbarrow surveyed the young woman with an inimitable expression of disdain; "Well, it's a time o' life YOU'LL never reach, sane or sound, my gel, take my word for't! Fine feathers makes fine birds, but the life is more'n the meat and the body more'n raiment.
"We ain't doin' nothin', Josey!" said Buggins, almost timidly. "Nor we ain't sayin' nothin'," added Bainton. "We be as harmless as doves," put in Adam Frost with a sly chuckle; "and we ain't no match for sarpints!" "Ain't you looking well, Mr. Letherbarrow!" ejaculated the smartly dressed barmaid; "Just wonderful for your time of life!" "My time o' life?"
The grip of 'the world' was on them, and the only worshipper remaining quietly in his place, with hands clasped across his stick, and eyes closed, was Josey Letherbarrow. The old man seemed to be praying inwardly his face was rapt and serene. Walden looked down upon him very tenderly. A verse of Browning's ran through his mind: "Grow old along with me!
"Well, it do beat me altogether, Miss," she exclaimed, "as to how these silly men, my 'usband, too, one of the silliest, beggin' your parding, could bring that poor old Josey Letherbarrow up here all this way! And he not toddled beyond the church this seven or eight years!
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