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Updated: June 18, 2025
She would as soon have thought of appearing before her brother without her stockings as without her stays; and Miss Thorne's stays were no trifle. And yet there was nothing for her to do when down. She fidgeted out to the lawn, and then back into the kitchen. She put on her high-heeled clogs, and fidgeted out into the paddock. Then she went into the small home park where the quintain was erected.
Them's the sports they care most about now-a-days. If you gets the young men at the quintain, you'll have all the young women in the pouts. 'Can't they look on, as their great grandmothers did before them? said Miss Thorne. 'It seems to me that the ladies ain't contented with looking now-a-days. Whatever the men do they'll do.
A good deal of beer was drunk on the occasion, and the quintain was "dratted" and "bothered," and very generally anathematized by all the mothers who had young sons likely to be placed in similar jeopardy. But the affair of Mrs. Lookaloft was of a more serious nature.
If the Lord Johns and Lord Georges didn't ride at the quintain, Miss Thorne might be sure that nobody else would. 'But, said she in dolorous voice, all but overcome by her cares; 'it was specially signified that there were to be sports. 'And so there will be, of course, said Mr Pomney. 'They'll all be sporting with the young ladies in the laurel walks.
He'd destroy himself and me, too, if I attempted to ride him at such a rattletrap as that." A rattletrap! The quintain that she had put up with so much anxious care; the game that she had prepared for the amusement of the stalwart yeomen of the country; the sport that had been honoured by the affection of so many of their ancestors!
A few miles from Tunbridge Wells is Offham, a little, out-of-the-way village which boasts of a queer mediaeval relic, the only one of the kind remaining in the Kingdom. This is called a quintain post and stands in the center of the village green. It consists of a revolving crossbar on the top of a tall, white post.
Thus clad she peered out into the tent, went to the ha-ha, and satisfied herself that at any rate the youngsters were amusing themselves, spoke a word to Mrs Greenacre over the ditch, and took one look at the quintain.
"If I was five-and-twenty, or thirty," continued he, "I should like nothing better than riding at the quintain all day." "But you are not too old to hunt or to shoot," said she. "If you can jump over a ditch and hedge, I am sure you could turn the quintain round."
After time had been given for the ensuing meal, all the yeomen and young men of the neighbourhood came up to the great outer court of the castle, where there was ample space for sports and military exercises, shooting with the long and cross bow, riding at the quintain and the like, in competitions with the grooms and men-at-arms attached to the retinue of the various great men; and the wives, daughters, and sweethearts came up to watch them.
Thorne was to be spared the quintain, and Miss Thorne determined to trust wholly to a youthful knight of hers, an immense favourite, who, as she often declared, was a pattern to the young men of the age and an excellent sample of an English yeoman. This was Farmer Greenacre's eldest son, who, to tell the truth, had from his earliest years taken the exact measure of Miss Thorne's foot.
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