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Updated: June 13, 2025
We looked at Parker, who was peeling potatoes on the off-shaft Parker, six feet two, with a soldier's bearing and we drifted off into thought. "And who drives?" we asked, with an intelligent interest. "Oh, Parker. And we do all the rest, you know." It was seven o'clock in the evening when we joined the caravan, in a stackyard on the outskirts of an Eastern county town.
I would advise any gentleman having a dog he values never to let it touch one of these old scabby Rats, as it may prove injurious to the health of the dog. It is surprising how far Rats will travel in the night. I have traced their tracks from a stackyard over two or three fields to a farm to get to their food.
With the straw rope of the stackyard stretched across, they demanded toll before the carriage would be allowed to pass. Pete, who sat by the door, put his head out and inquired solemnly if the highway women would take their charge in silver or in kind half-a-crown apiece or a kiss all round. They laughed, and answered that they saw no objection to taking both.
We went out into the stackyard, and agreed that each of us should draw a straw from a wheat-stack. He that drew the longest straw should have the first right of speaking. Then we put our hands to the stack and drew our straws. I beat him there my straw was a good foot longer than his. "You have beaten me again," he said. "Is it always to be so? But I will wait, cousin Humphrey."
Presently the roof of the building fell in, sending up showers of glowing embers, which lit upon the thatch of the farm byres and sheds, and upon the ricks built and building in the stackyard, so that all these caught also, and before dawn were utterly consumed. One by one the watchers in the Nunnery wearied of the lamentable sight, and muttering prayers, departed terrified to their beds.
She was dressed in a duffel coat or pelisse, which I think country folk call a Joseph; but I followed her at a distance, through fields and owre stiles, till I saw her enter a sma' farm-house. There were some bits o' bairns, apparently hinds' bairns, sitting round a sort o' duck-dub near the stackyard. "'Wha lives there, dearies? says I to them, pointing wi' my finger to the farm-house.
"That's 'im that's Lord George Sanger," was said of the writer by one of the crowd of small boys assembled at the stackyard gate. A travelling menagerie and circus was advertised in a somewhat "voyant" manner on the town walls, and a fancied resemblance to the aristocratic manager thereof accredited us with an honourable connection in the enterprise.
My first impulse was to run into the stackyard where they were, and to knock him down; but he was a strong lad, and, thinks I, 'second thoughts are best. I was resolved, however, that my mother should find I wasna such a simpleton as she gied me out to be so I turned round upon my heel and went home saying to mysel, as the song says
An early start had been projected, but owing to the fact that after breakfast Parker had to beat the carpet, wash the dishes, plates, cups and saucers, knives and forks, and his own face, strike the tent, let the air out of the air-beds, roll up the waterproof sheets, clean the saucepans, groom the horses, ship the shafts, send off a parcel from the station, buy two loaves of bread, and thank the owner of the stackyard owing, I say, to the fact that Parker had these things to accomplish while we "did the rest," it was eleven o'clock before all hands were summoned to get "her" out of the narrow gateway.
One horse broke his back, another was drowned, Multum-in-Parvo was cut all to pieces, his rider had two ribs and a thumb broken, while Farmer Slyfield's stackyard was fired by some of the itinerant tribe, and all its uninsured contents destroyed so that his landlord was not the only person who suffered by the grand occasion. Nor was this all, for Mr.
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