“Thank you very much for having come to-night,” he said, in a voice free from any twang of dialect—­the voice he fell into naturally after a day alone with the Parson:  “I’m very glad you could come.  I hope I’ll often see you and that we’ll all be very happy together....”  He paused, could think of nothing more to say, so retreated back in sudden shyness against the Parson’s arm.

There was another moment of hush.  Archelaus was sitting, his face suffused, staring in front of him; a murmuring of “the pretty lil’ dear” ... ran amongst the women.  It was Lenine who brought the moment to its fit rounding.

“Three cheers for Missus and the lil’ Squire,” he called, and on that able blend of sentiments all voices met with a roar.  As the last sound died away Phoebe could be heard clamouring: 

“I can do things too; Da Boase nadn’t think Ishmael can do it all.  I can dance and sing, I can!”

“So thee can, my worm,” boomed the miller, and, swinging her up, he stood her also on the table.  “Shaw us what ’ee can do, my beauty,” he encouraged her.

Phoebe, not at all shy, spread her crumpled skirts and did a little dance that consisted of jigging up and down in the same place, to the accompaniment of a sing-song of one verse: 

  “I likes coffee an’ I likes tea,
  I likes th’ chaps an’ th’ chaps likes me,
  So, mawther, you go an’ hold your tongue—­
  You had a fellow when you was young!”

Thus piped Phoebe, and the audience applauded with clapping and laughter.  Her cheeks were ablaze with the excitement of success; she seized on Ishmael for the promised dance.  But the Parson bade him say good-night and come away.  He remained deaf to all appeals from Phoebe for just one dance, only one, and, making his own farewells, bore Ishmael back with him to the Vicarage for the night.  He was going to run no risk of an anti-climax.

CHAPTER VI

REACTIONS

There are days in life which, to the backward look of later years stand out with undying vividness, and this not necessarily because of any import attached to them; often, in the irrational workings of memory, very vital affairs refuse to come when bid, while quite little things or aspects of them are imprinted on the mind for ever.  That ceremony of “Crying the Neck” at Cloom had, it is true, been for Ishmael Ruan a notable happening, but it was for a certain pictorial brilliance that he retained it so clearly in after years, and not for any strategic importance, which at the time would not have impressed him.  Yet, long afterwards, in the light of that memory, he saw how his life had turned a corner on that occasion, and how after it a different phase began.

Life to him at that time was, of course, entirely centred round himself, the only organism of which he was thoroughly aware.  People went to fill his world, but only as they affected him.  Archelaus was a terrific being whom he held in awe for his feats of strength, but about whom he was beginning to be conscious of a certain inferiority.  Tom he dreaded for his powers of sarcasm, and here he felt no sense of superiority as he did over Archelaus; Tom could make him feel even smaller than the Parson could, and with no kindly intention behind to soften the knock.