“You understand me, you bad boy! As long as you’re with me you got to come under collar. And wher’ll you be next I _dunno_, a bad creature like you, ay! An’ then to turn roun’ an’ answer me! _I dunno!_ I dunno _what’s_ comen tyeh. Ye know ye lost that sixpence through glammering about. Wher’ d’ye lose it, ay? Wher’ d’ye lose it, ay?”
At these questions be seized the boy by the neck and shook him as a child does a bottle of water. The baby behind them was taken with little gusts of laughter at the sight, and the woman cooed back playfully at her.
Her only answer was a giggle of laughter as she disappeared behind a hedge. The child toddled up to its father and took his hand, while the quiet boy took her other hand with relief. She laughed up into their faces, and the man resumed his homily.
“He’s a bad, bad boy. He’s a vurry _naughty_ bad boy!”
By-and-by the woman came shuffling after them; the boy looked furtively around and dropped his sister’s hand.
“Carm on, me beauty!” cried the man, lifting the girl to his shoulder. “He’s a bad boy; you ’ave a ride on your daddy.” They went on alone, and the woman joined the boy. He looked up at her with a sad face.
“O, my Christ, Johnny!” she said, putting her arms round the boy, “what’s ’e bin doin’ to yeh? Yer face is all blood!”
“It’s only me nose, mother. Here,” he whispered, “here’s the tanner.”
They went together down the hill towards the inn, which had already a light in its windows. The screams from the barn had ceased, and a cart passed them full of young pigs, bloody and subdued. The hill began to resume its old dominion of soft sounds. It was nearly nine o’clock, and one anxious farmer still made hay although, on this side of the down, day had declined, and with a greyness that came not from the sky, but crept up from the world. From the quiet hill, as the last skein of cocks was carted to the stack, you could hear dimly men’s voices and the rattle of their gear.
Piffingcap had the cup from an old friend, a queer-minded man. He had given it to him just before he had gone out of this continent, not for the first but for the last time--a cup of lead with an inscription upon it in decent letters but strange words.
“Here, Elmer,” said his old friend to the barber of Bagwood, “have this--there’s the doom of half a million beards in it!”