ghted and delivered the first ball, and then walked away with my
hand in his, saying:

'Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you.
The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I
last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And now to see
the bed you have slept in.'

Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and
a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.

'Ha!' said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: 'madam, I am
your life-long debtor and friend!' He kissed her on the cheek.

John Thresher cried out: 'Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.'

She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our
departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering crowd
of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great gun. 'A
royal salvo!' said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I had
forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my
friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true,
until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view of
the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my
playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on
Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story.
She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb
that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and kept looking so, but
would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look when I
had forgotten that of all the others.

CHAPTER IV

I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR

Though I had not previously seen a postillion in my life, I gazed on the
pair bobbing regularly on their horses before me, without a thought upon
the marvel of their sudden apparition and connection with my fortunes. I
could not tire of hearing the pleasant music of the many feet at the
trot, and tried to explain to my father that the men going up and down
made it like a piano that played of itself. He laughed and kissed me; he
remembered having once shown me the inside of a piano when the keys were
knocked. My love for him as we drove into London had a recognized
footing: I perceived that he was my best friend and only true companion,
besides his being my hero. The wicked men who had parted us were no
longer able to do harm, he said. I forgot, in my gladness at their
defeat, to ask