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"Aye, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the landlord. "Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that's all," said Mr. Macey, winking mysteriously, "and then make believe, if you like, as you didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping o' the hosses, nor the cracking o' the whips, and howling, too, if it's tow'rt daybreak.
As was very natural, a great deal of curiosity was felt concerning the arrival of the distinguished stranger, and as his mother, a proud, stately woman, was to accompany him, Miss Olivia Macey, who boasted of having once been a schoolmate of the haughty lady, resolved upon meeting them at the depot, thinking she should thereby show them proper respect.
Macey, the garrulous, and observant parish clerk; Dolly Winthrop, the kind-hearted countrywoman who cannot understand the mysteries of religion and so interprets God in terms of human love, these are real people, whom having once met we can never forget.
"I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, rightly knows what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church. What are they, Aaron, my dear?" Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork. "Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly.
Macey and myself until we can get out of this crowd," urged Mr. Macey, bustling the boys toward the runabout. Mrs. Macey, whitefaced, was crying softly and could not speak. But her husband, with the two boys standing up before him, honked his horn and turned on the power, starting the car slowly. A path was thus made for their escape through the crowd, though the cheering began again.
There was a grim twitching at the corners of prescott's mouth, but he said nothing. Again the coin was tossed. This time Dick called: "Heads!" He won. "I'm ready," announced Dick quietly. "I congratulate you, old fellow," murmured Dave eagerly. "And I'm going with you to the base of the flagpole! The last climb is yours you've won it!" The Nerve of the Soldier Again Mrs. Macey sought to interpose.
Her stories are not permeated with joyousness, like those of Dickens, nor do they ripple with quiet amusement, like the novels of Thackeray; but she puts witty and aphoristic sayings into the conversations of the characters. The scene at the "Rainbow" inn is bristling with mother wit. Mr. Macey observes:
Very dear to Miss Macey were the orphan children of her only sister, and faithfully did she strive to fulfill her trust, but she could not conceal her partiality for fun-loving, curly-haired Ben, nor the fact that the sensitive and ambitious Maggie, who thirsted for knowledge, was wholly unappreciated and misunderstood.
Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an abundant crop of long white hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, advanced to the indicated spot, bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as to say that he respected the company, though he respected the key-note more.
Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be supposed to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul went loose from his body? Here was the demonstration: nevertheless, on the whole, he would have been as well contented without it.
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