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This peat about the Toft was coal's young relative, and burned slowly into a beautiful creamy ash, giving out a glow of warmth that was wanted there when the wind blew from the northern sea.
"It's freezing, I think," said Mr Swann, when he came home at six o'clock from his day's majestic work at Toft End. This was in the bedroom. Mrs Swann, a comely little thing of thirty-nine, was making herself resplendent for the inaugural solemnity of the Festival, which began at eight. The news of the frost disturbed her. "How annoying!" she said. "Annoying?" he questioned blandly. "Why?"
But the evening was rapidly coming on, and the punt's head was turned homewards, the distance they had come proving startling, as they began now to feel that they were very hungry, and that they had hours of work before them before they could reach the Toft. "Not many fish to land," said Dick rather dismally. "Why, you wouldn't fish!" replied Tom. "Never mind, we've found the island.
Dick now took the pole, and it was Tom's turn to try and administer a little comfort in the shape of words as to the time that would elapse before they could reach the Toft; but the only result was to produce an angry snarl from their patient. "How does he seem?" Dick asked, as Tom went to his relief. "Better not ask him." "Why not?" "Perhaps he'll bite you. He nearly did me.
The time seemed to be drawn out to a terrible extent before there was a perceptible lightening on their left; and as soon as he saw that, though the mist was as thick as ever, Hickathrift rose and began to work with the pole, for he knew his bearings now by the position of the rising moon, and working away, in half an hour the little party emerged from the mist as suddenly as they had dived in, but they were far wide of their destination, and quite another hour elapsed before they reached the old willow-stump, where the wheelwright made fast his boat, and assuring his companions that there was nothing much wrong he went to his cottage, while Mr Marston gladly accompanied Dick to the Toft, feeling after the shock they had had that even if it had not been so late, a walk down to the sea-beach that night would neither be pleasant nor one to undertake.
"Ye heard?" said he to me. "And what am I to do with ye?" "I'll go with you, of course," I answered. "I may be kept up there a while." "I don't care," I said roisterously. "It's a pub and I'm a traveller." Stirling's household was in bed and his assistant gone home. While he and Titus got out the car I wrote a line for the Brindleys: "Gone with doctor to see patient at Toft End. Don't wait up.
"Yes," said the squire hoarsely; "the bank has gone, my boy." "Hadn't we better push on, father, before it gets any deeper?" "Stop a moment, Dick," said the squire, "and let me try to think. Home's safe, because the Priory's on the Toft; but there's Tallington and his wife and boy. We must try and help them." "Come on, then, father!" cried Dick excitedly.
"Let the boy come, wife," said the squire quietly; "I'll take care of him." "Yes, and I'll take care of father," cried Dick, rushing at his mother to give her a sounding kiss, and with a sigh she gave way, and followed the party down to the water's edge. There was still a furious current running on the far side of the Toft, as, well provided with lanterns, the two punts pushed off.
"I don't know," said Dick one day as he stood with his arms folded, leaning upon Solomon, talking to Tom Tallington and staring at Thorpeley the constable, who was leaning against a post smoking and staring with one eye at the fen, while with the other he watched the group of three in the Toft farm-yard. "Well, I'm sure I don't," said Tom. "He never goes over to the town to buy any."
Everything about the Toft was at peace, and down toward the wheelwright's the labourers' cottages were so still that it was evident that some of the people had gone to bed.
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