‘Aha! that was my case too,’ he cried.  ’Beany—­you say—­but certainly I did not conduct myself well.  I was proud of—­of such things as porches—­a Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice—­proud of one Torrigiano’s arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the gilt scroll-work for the Sovereign—­our King’s ship.  But Father Roger sitting in Merton Library, he did not forget me.  At the top of my pride, when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us Dawes have been buried for six generations.  “Out!  Son of my Art!” said he.  “Fight the Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman.”  And I quaked, and I went ...  How’s yon, Robin?’ He flourished the finished sketch before Puck.

‘Me!  Me past peradventure,’ said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror.  ‘Ah, see!  The rain has took off!  I hate housen in daylight.’

‘Whoop!  Holiday!’ cried Hal, leaping up.  ’Who’s for my Little Lindens?  We can talk there.’

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam.

‘Body o’ me,’ said Hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were just ready to blossom.  ’What are these?  Vines?  No, not vines, and they twine the wrong way to beans.’  He began to draw in his ready book.

‘Hops.  New since your day,’ said Puck.  ’They’re an herb of Mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale.  We say—­

’Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer
Came into England all in one year.’

’Heresy I know.  I’ve seen Hops—­God be praised for their beauty!  What is your Turkis?’

The children laughed.  They knew the Lindens turkeys, and as soon as they reached Lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them.

Out came Hal’s book at once.  ‘Hoity-toity!’ he cried.  ’Here’s Pride in purple feathers!  Here’s wrathy contempt and the Pomps of the Flesh!  How d’you call them?’

‘Turkeys!  Turkeys!’ the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed against Hal’s plum-coloured hose.

‘’Save Your Magnificence!’ he said.  ’I’ve drafted two good new things today.’  And he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird.

Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where Little Lindens stands.  The old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light.  The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

The farmer’s wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard.  The old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house.  Puck clicked back the garden-gate.