Читать книгу Tom Brown at Rugby - Hughes Thomas - Страница 32

The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of peasantry in general. A snug chimney-corner with two seats and a small carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the fire-place, a dresser209 with shelves, on which some bright pewter plates and crockery-ware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and settles,210 some framed samplers211 and an old print or two, and a book-case with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches212 of bacon and other stores fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the furniture. No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle,213 and the row of labelled vials on one of the shelves betoken it.

Tom played about with some kittens who occupied the hearth, and with a goat who walked demurely in at the open door, while their host and Benjy spread the table for dinner – and was soon engaged in conflict with the cold meat, to which he did much honor. The two old men's talk was of old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons214 of the Vale, and of the doings thirty years back – which didn't interest him much, except when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then, indeed, he began to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder, that his dear and wonderful canal had not been there always – was not, in fact, as old as Benjy or Farmer Ives, which caused a strange commotion in his small brain.

After dinner Benjy called attention to a wart which Tom had on the knuckles of his hand, and which the family doctor had been trying his skill on without success, and begged the farmer to charm it away. Farmer Ives looked at it, muttered something or another over it, and cut some notches in a short stick, which he handed to Benjy, giving him instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air and gave a call, which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and shoulders, making love to him and scrambling over one another's back to get to his face; and then he threw them all off, and they fluttered about close by, and lighted on him again and again when he held up his arms. All the creatures about the place were clean and fearless, quite unlike their relations elsewhere; and Tom begged to be taught how to make all the pigs and cows and poultry in our village tame, at which the farmer only gave one of his grim chuckles.