eat the rest all roared. Another was a fat, round
man who chuckled constantly to himself, as if this life were all a joke;
and there was a quite severe, important-seeming, oldish man who said,
"Hem--hem!" from time to time, as if about to speak forthwith, yet never
spoke a word. There was also among the rest a raw-boned, lanky fellow
who had bitten the heart out of an oat-cake and held the rim of it in
his fingers like a new moon, waving it around while he talked, until the
little man beside him popped it deftly out of his grasp and ate it
before the other saw where it was gone. But when he made out what was
become of that oat-cake he rose up solemnly, took the little man by the
collar as a huntsman takes a pup, and laid him softly in the grass
without a word.

What a laughing and going-on was then! It was as if they all were
growing young again. And in the middle of the row a head popped over the
quick-set hedge, and a most stentorian voice called out, "Here, here! Go
slow--I want a piece of that!"

They all looked up, and the moment they spied that laughing face and
cloak of Holland cloth, raised a shout of "What, there!" "Well met!"
"Come in, Ben." "Where hast thou tarried so long?" and the like; while
the waiter ran to open the gate and let the stranger in.

A quiet man with a little chestnut-colored beard and hazel eyes, which
lit up quickly at sight of the stranger over the hedge, arose from his
place by the table and went down the path with hands outstretched to
greet him.

"Welcome, welcome, hurly-burly Ben," said he. "We've missed thee from
the feast. Art well? And what's the good word?"

"Ah, Will, thou gentle rogue!" the other cried, catching the hands of
the quiet man and holding him off while he looked at him there. "How
thou stealest one's heart with the glance of thine eye! I was going to
give thee a piece of my mind; but a plague, old heart! who could chide
thee to thy face? Am I well? Ay, exceedingly well. And the news? Jove!
the best that was baked at the Queen's to-day, and straight from the
oven-door! The thing is done--huff, puff, and away we go! But come
on--this needs telling to the rest."

They came up the path together, the big man crunching the mussel-shells
beneath his sturdy tread, and so into the circle of yellow light that
came down from the lantern among the apple-leaves, the big man with his
arm around the quiet man's shoulders, holding his hand; for the quiet
man was not so large