he treated
them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a
warm halo over matters at once.

"That's a drop of the right sort, I can see," said Grandfer Cantle,
with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste
it.

"Yes," said Wildeve, "'tis some old mead. I hope you will like it."

"O ay!" replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words
demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. "There
isn't a prettier drink under the sun."

"I'll take my oath there isn't," added Grandfer Cantle. "All that can
be said against mead is that 'tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a
man a good while. But tomorrow's Sunday, thank God."

"I feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after I had had
some once," said Christian.

"You shall feel so again," said Wildeve, with condescension, "Cups or
glasses, gentlemen?"

"Well, if you don't mind, we'll have the beaker, and pass 'en round;
'tis better than heling it out in dribbles."

"Jown the slippery glasses," said Grandfer Cantle. "What's the good
of a thing that you can't put down in the ashes to warm, hey,
neighbours; that's what I ask?"

"Right, Grandfer," said Sam; and the mead then circulated.

"Well," said Timothy Fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some
form or other, "'tis a worthy thing to be married, Mr. Wildeve; and
the woman you've got is a dimant, so says I. Yes," he continued, to
Grandfer Cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the
partition, "her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was
as good a feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation
ready against anything underhand."

"Is that very dangerous?" said Christian.

"And there were few in these parts that were upsides with him," said
Sam. "Whenever a club walked he'd play the clarinet in the band that
marched before 'em as if he'd never touched anything but a clarinet
all his life. And then, when they got to church door he'd throw down
the clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass-viol, and rozum
away as if he'd never played anything but a bass-viol. Folk would
say--folk that knowed what a true stave was--'Surely, surely that's
never the same man that I saw handling the clarinet so masterly by
now!"

"I can mind it," said the furze-cutter. "'Twas a wonderful thing that
one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering."

"There was Kingsbere church likewise," Fairway rec