There was no longer any remembrance of why the “veast” had been instituted, but nevertheless it had a pleasant and almost sacred character of its own; for it was then that all the children of the village, wherever they were scattered, tried to get home for a holiday to visit their fathers and mothers and friends, bringing with them their wages or some little gift from up the country for the old folk.  Perhaps for a day or two before, but at any rate on “veast day” and the day after, in our village, you might see strapping, healthy young men and women from all parts of the country going round from house to house in their best clothes, and finishing up with a call on Madam Brown, whom they would consult as to putting out their earnings to the best advantage, or how best to expend the same for the benefit of the old folk.  Every household, however poor, managed to raise a “feast-cake” and a bottle of ginger or raisin wine, which stood on the cottage table ready for all comers, and not unlikely to make them remember feast-time, for feast-cake is very solid, and full of huge raisins.  Moreover, feast-time was the day of reconciliation for the parish.  If Job Higgins and Noah Freeman hadn’t spoken for the last six months, their “old women” would be sure to get it patched up by that day.  And though there was a good deal of drinking and low vice in the booths of an evening, it was pretty well confined to those who would have been doing the like, “veast or no veast;” and on the whole, the effect was humanising and Christian.  In fact, the only reason why this is not the case still is that gentlefolk and farmers have taken to other amusements, and have, as usual, forgotten the poor.  They don’t attend the feasts themselves, and call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them also, and they become what they are called.  Class amusements, be they for dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a country.  The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still more or less sociable and universal; there’s a place for every man who will come and take his part.

No one in the village enjoyed the approach of “veast day” more than Tom, in the year in which he was taken under old Benjy’s tutelage.  The feast was held in a large green field at the lower end of the village.  The road to Farringdon ran along one side of it, and the brook by the side of the road; and above the brook was another large, gentle, sloping pasture-land, with a footpath running down it from the churchyard; and the old church, the originator of all the mirth, towered up with its gray walls and lancet windows, overlooking and sanctioning the whole, though its own share therein had been forgotten.  At the point where the footpath crossed the brook and road, and entered on the field where the feast was held, was a long, low roadside inn; and on the opposite side of the field was a large white thatched farmhouse, where dwelt an old sporting farmer, a great promoter of the revels.