Through the low and heavy clouds the voice and footsteps of children, as they trotted off with their milk tins, seemed to echo in my ears, and other sounds to hover round me, carrying with them a kind of hollow sepulchral sensation, telling me that summer was dead and autumn was preparing nature for the winter shroud, which was undergoing the process of weaving by angelic hands.
The sound of the thresher’s flail was heard in the barn, calling out “Clank,” “Clank,” “Clank,” “Thud,” as it struck the corn and barn floor, causing the precious grain to fly like a shower of small pellets against the doors. Not a gleam of sunshine was to be seen. Summer and winter seemed during the last fortnight to have been struggling with each other, in the death-throes of nature for the mastery. Genial summer had to give way to savage winter, and little robins piped forth the victory. Everywhere seemed cold, damp, and covered with melancholy. As we meditated upon the surroundings, our carrier drove to our door with his van, into which I got, and seated myself in one of the corners almost out of sight. A patent “four-wheeler” of this kind I had not been used to, and our little folks did their best to try to persuade me not to try the experiment. We had not gone many yards before eggs, boxes, whiskey bottles, butter, and onions were handed to our carrier for carriage and safe custody to Daventry fair. Fat and thin women were closely packed round me. Welton is a noted village for fat women, which may be the result of the excellent water. While our village blacksmith was putting some of his handiwork into the carrier’s van, the scene brought vividly to my mind Longfellow’s poem. He might have seen the very spot.
“Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.”
I mumbled the verse over to myself as we jogged along. To have repeated or bawled it out in such “close quarters” would have been worse than putting one’s head into a hatbox.