“There ‘e goes!” he said half aloud—­“Jes’ like a boy!—­for all the wurrld like a boy!  I reckon ‘e’s got the secret o’ never growin’ old, for all that ’is ‘air’s turnin’ a bit grey.  ’Ow many passons in this ’ere neighbrood would carry the children like that, I wonder?  Not one on ’em!—­though there’s a many to pick an’ choose from—­a darned sight too many if you axes my opinion!  Old Putty Leveson, wi’s bobbin’ an’ ’is bowin’s to the east—­hor!—­hor!—­hor!—­a fine east ’e’s got in ‘is mouldy preachin’ barn, wi’ a whitewashed wall an’ a dirty bit o’ tinsel fixed up agin it—­he wouldn’t touch a child o’ ourn, to save ’is life—­though ’e’s got three or four mean, lyin’ pryin’ brats of ‘is own runnin’ wild about the place as might jest as well ’ave never been born.  And as for Francis Anthony, the ‘igh pontiff o’ Riversford, wi’s big altar-cloak embrided for ’im by all the poor skinny spinsters wot ain’t never ’ad no chance to marry—­’e’d see all the children blowed to bits under the walls of Jericho to the sound o’ the trumpets afore ’e’d touch ’em!  Talk o’ saints!—­I’m not very good at unnerstannin’ that kind o’ folk, not seein’ myself ’owever a saint could manage to get on in this mortal wurrld; but I reckon to think there’s a tollable imitation o’ the real article in Passon Walden—­the jolly sort o’ saint, o’ coorse,—­ not the prayin’, whinin’, snuffin’ kind.  ‘E’s been doin’ nothin’ but good ever since ’e came ’ere, which m’appen partly from ’is not bein’ married.  If ‘e’d gotten a wife, the place would a’ been awsome different.  Not but wot ’e ain’t a bit cranky over ’is, flowers ’isself.  But I’d rather ’ave ‘im fussin’ round than a petticut arter me.  A petticut at ‘ome’s enough, an’ I ain’t complainin’ on it, though it’s a bit breezy sometimes,—­but a petticut in the gard’nin’ line would drive me main wild—­it would reely now!”

And still smiling with perfect complacency, he watched the Maypole being carried carefully along the space of grass left open between the fruit trees on either side of the orchard, and followed its bright patch of colour and the children’s faces and forms around it, till it entirely disappeared among the thicker green of a clump of elms that bordered the ‘big meadow,’ which Walden generally kept clear of both crops and cattle for the benefit of the village sports and pastimes.

He was indeed the only land-owner in the district who gave any consideration of this kind to the needs of the people.  St. Rest was surrounded on all sides by several large private properties, richly wooded, and possessing many acres of ploughed and pasture land, but there was no public right-of-way across any single one of them, and every field, every woodland path, every tempting dell was rigidly fenced and guarded from ‘vulgar’ intrusion.  None of the proprietors of these estates, however, appeared to take the least personal joy or pride in their possessions.  They were for the most part away in London for ‘the season’ or abroad ‘out’ of the season,—­and their extensive woods appeared to exist chiefly for the preservation of game, reared solely to be shot by a few idle louts of fashion during September and October, and also for the convenience and support of a certain land agent, one Oliver Leach, who cut down fine old timber whenever he needed money, and thought it advisable to pocket the proceeds of such devastation.