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The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape.
"There is no need," says he, "to burst these goodly locks by force. Then dropping his head, he goes slowly to the door, but there he turns, lifting his head and fixing his rheumy eyes on Moll. "I will take nothing from this house, not even the chattels that belong to me, bought from the mean wage I have allowed myself. So shalt thou judge of my honesty.
He wiped a rheumy tear from his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thing to another. "How many years?" he asked. "You must be prepared to be surprised." "Well?" "More than a gross of years." He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a what?" Two of them spoke together.
Here and there you will even see venerable greybeards suffering from rheumy coughs who ought to be at home; and though occasionally there is a lithe youngster in European clothes with the veneer he acquired abroad not yet completely rubbed off, the total impression is that of oldish men who have reached years of maturity and who are as representative of the country and as good as the country is in a position today to provide.
It was a tall, meagre, dry-featured man, dressed with the painful neatness of self-respecting poverty: the edges of his coat-sleeves were carefully darned; his black necktie and a skull-cap which covered his baldness were evidently of home manufacture. He smiled softly and timidly with blue, rheumy eyes.
His eye is dull and rheumy; his nether lip hung down upon his chin.
No player yet, be he colt or vet, won praise from this critic gloomy; he'll sit and scowl like a poisoned owl, and his eyes are red and rheumy; and his blood is thin and his heart is tin, and his head is stuffed with cotton; and he merely sits, throwing frequent fits, and he calls out "punk!" and "rotten!"
"Three guineas going for three guineas!" said the rheumy man. "No bid?" said the husband. "Good Lord, why she's cost me fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on." "Four guineas!" cried the auctioneer. "I'll tell ye what I won't sell her for less than five," said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced.
A dark man is in love with pretty lady. Gipsy sees a marriage not so very far ahead. Pretty lady says "What nonsense!" but looks serious. Pretty lady's pretty friends must, of course, be teasing. Gallant gentleman friend, by curious coincidence, happens to be dark. Gipsy grins and passes on. Is that all the gipsy knows of pretty lady's future? The rheumy, cunning eyes!
It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had sunken their rheumy eyes.
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