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that old grandpapa of yours with respect, because on the twenty-first, child, hell be playing what I take to be the original version of
King Lear
. There now!”
    Dr. Otterly smiled, gave Camilla a little pat and made a general announcement.
    “If you fellows want to practice,” he shouted, “you’ll have to do it now. I can’t give you more than half an hour. Mary Yeoville’s in labour.”
    “Where’s Mr. Ralph?” Dan asked.
    “He rang up to say he might be late. Doesn’t matter, really. The Betty’s a free lance after all. Everyone else is here. My fiddle’s in the car.”
    “Come on, then, chaps,” said old William. “Into the barn.” He had turned away and taken up a sacking bundle when he evidently remembered his grand-daughter.
    “If you bean’t too proud,” he said, glowering at her, “you can come and have a tell up to Copse Forge tomorrow.”
    “I’d love to. Thank you, Grandfather. Good luck to the rehearsal.”
    “What sort of outlandish word’s that? We’re going to practice.”
    “Same thing. May I watch?”
    “You can
not
. ’Tis men’s work, and no female shall have part nor passel in it.”
    “Just too bad,” said Begg, “isn’t it, Miss Campion? I think we ought to jolly well make an exception in this case.”
    “No. No!” Camilla cried. “I was only being facetious. It’s all right, Grandfather. Sorry. I wouldn’t dream of butting in.”
    “Doan’t go nourishing and ’citing thik old besom, neither.”
    “No, no, I promise. Good-night, everybody.”
    “Good-night, Cordelia,” said Dr. Otterly.
    The door swung to behind the men. Camilla said good-night to the Plowmans and climbed up to her room. Tom Plowman went out to the kitchen.
    Trixie, left alone, moved round into the bar-parlour to tidy it up. She saw the envelope that Camilla in the excitement of opening her letter had let fall.
    Trixie picked it up and, in doing so, caught sight of the superscription. For a moment she stood very still, looking at it, the tip of her tongue appearing between her teeth as if she thought to herself, “This is tricky.” Then she gave a rich chuckle, crumpled the envelope and pitched it into the fire. She heard the door of the public bar open and returned there to find Ralph Stayne himself staring unhappily at her.
    “Trixie —?”
    “I reckon,” Trixie said, “you’m thinking you’ve got yourself into a terrible old pickle.”
    “Look — Trixie—”
    “Be off,” she said.
    “All right. I’m sorry.”
    He turned away and was arrested by her voice, mocking him.
    “I will say, however, that if she takes you, she’ll get a proper man.”
    In the disused barn behind the pub, Dr. Otterly’s fiddle gave out a tune as old as the English calendar. Deceptively simply, it bounced and twiddled, insistent in its reiterated demand that whoever heard it should feel in some measure the impulse to jump.
    Here, five men jumped — cleverly, with concentration and variety. For one dance they had bells clamped to their thick legs and, as they capered and tramped, the bells jerked positively with an overtone of irrelevant tinkling. For another, they were linked, as befitted the sons of a blacksmith, by steel: by a ring made of five swords. They pranced and leapt over their swords. They wove and unwove a concentric pattern. Their boots banged down the fiddle’s rhythm and with each down-clamp a cloud of dust was bumped up from the floor. The men’s faces were blank with concentration: Dan’s, Andy’s, Nat’s, Chris’s and Ernie’s. On the perimeter of the figure and moving round it, danced the Old Guiser, William Andersen. On his head was a rabbit-skin cap. He carried the classic stick-and-bladder. He didn’t dance with the vigour of his sons but with dedication. He made curious, untheatrical gestures that seemed to have some kind of significance. He also chided his sons and sometimes called them to a halt in order to do so.
    Independent of the Guiser but also moving as an