Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and
hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox.

Not that he, Jennifer, as he explained, owned to any quarrel with the
alien invasion. Good for trade they were, that tripper lot, though
wonnerful simple, he must say, when they came to talk, blessed with an
almighty wide swallow for any long-eared fairy tale you liked to put on
them. Mortal full of senseless questions, too, fit to make anybody
laugh!--Whereat overcome by joyous memories of human folly, he opened the
red cavern of his apparently toothless mouth, barking up audible mirth,
brief and husky, from the depth of a beer-slaked throat.

He leaned forward while speaking, resting chest and elbows on the
oars--only now and again dipping the blades in the water to steady the
boat in its course as it moved smoothly onward borne by brimming stream
and tide. From out the shadow of his thimble-crowned hat he looked up
knowingly, with the freemasonry of assured good-temper at Tom, who stood
before him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions
for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of
chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical
South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order.
Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet
non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the
pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, was a
master of primitive knowledge and of arts not taught in modern Board (or
any other) Schools; a merry fellow too, who could, as Tom divined, when
company and circumstances allowed, be broadly, unprintably humorous.

So, in this last connection perhaps, it was just as well that Damaris
still appeared somewhat implacable. Coming on board she had passed
Jennifer--who rowed amidships--and gone right forward, putting as wide a
distance as conditions permitted between her cousin and herself. Now, as
she sat on a pile of red-brown seine nets in the bow of the boat, she
kept her face averted, looking away down the cool liquid highway, and
presenting to his observation a graceful, white-clad but eminently
discouraging back. Her attitude repelled rather than invited advances, so
at least Tom, watching her, certainly thought. This justified his not
following her but staying where he was, and leaving her to herself.
Wher