KISS WHEN SHE'S RIPE FOR TEARS It was the Sunday after Leslie's visit. We had had a wretched week, with everybody mute and unhappy.
 
Though Spring had come, none of us saw it. Afterwards it occurred to me that I had seen all the ranks of poplars suddenly bursten into a dark glow, with a flutter of blood-red where the sun came through the leaves; that I had found high cradles where the swan's eggs lay by the waterside; that I had seen the daffodils leaning from the -grown wooden walls of the boat-house, and all, moss, daffodils, water, with the pink scarves from the elm buds; that I had broken the half-spread fans of the sycamore, and had watched the white cloud of sloe-blossom go silver grey against the evening sky: but I had not perceived it, and I had not any vivid spring-pictures left from the neglected week.
 
It was Sunday evening, just after tea, when Lettie suddenly said to me:
 
"Come with me down to Strelley Mill."
 
I was astonished, but I obeyed unquestioningly. On the threshold we heard a of girls, and immediately Alice's voice greeted us:
 
"Hello, Sybil, love! Hello, Lettie! Come on, here's a of the goddesses. Come on, you just make us right. You're Juno, and here's Meg, she's Venus, and I'm—here, somebody, who am I, tell us quick—did you say Minerva, Sybil dear? Well you ought, then! Now Paris, hurry up. He's putting his Sunday clothes on to take us a walk—Laws, what a time it takes him! Get your blushes ready, Meg—now, Lettie, look , and I'll look wise. I wonder if he wants me to go and tie his tie. Oh, Glory—where on earth did you get that antimacassar?"
 
"In Nottingham—don't you like it?" said George referring to his tie. "Hello, Lettie—have you come?"
 
"Yes, it's a gathering of the goddesses. Have you that apple? If so, hand it over," said Alice.
 
"What apple?"
 
"Oh, Lum, his education! Paris's apple—Can't you see we've come to be chosen?"
 
"Oh, well—I haven't got any apple—I've eaten mine."
 
"Isn't he flat—he's like boiling magnesia that's done boiling for a week. Are you going to take us all to church then?"
 
"If you like."
 
"Come on, then. Where's the of Love? Look at Lettie looking shocked. sorry, old girl—thought love agreed with you."
 
"Did you say love?" inquired George.
 
"Yes, I did; didn't I, Meg? And you say 'Love' as well, don't you?"
 
"I don't know what it is," laughed Meg, who was very red and rather bewildered.
 
"'Amor est titillatio'—'Love is a ,'—there—that's it, isn't it, Sybil?"
 
"How should I know."
 
"Of course not, old fellow. Leave it to the girls. See how knowing Lettie looks—and, laws, Lettie, you are solemn."
 
"It's love," suggested George, over his new neck-tie.
 
"I'll bet it is 'degustasse sat est'—ain't it, Lettie? 'One lick's enough'—'and damned be he that first cries: Hold, enough!'—Which one do you like? But are you going to take us to church, Georgie, darling—one by one, or all at once?"
 
"What do you want me to do, Meg?" he asked.
 
"Oh, I don't mind."
 
"And do you mind, Lettie?"
 
"I'm not going to church."
 
"Let's go a walk somewhere—and let us start now," said Emily somewhat . She did not like this nonsense.
 
"There you are Syb—you've got your orders—don't leave me behind," Alice.
 
Emily frowned and bit her finger.
 
"Come on, Georgie. You look like the finger of a pair scales—between two weights. Which'll draw?"
 
"The heavier," he replied, smiling, and looking neither at Meg or Lettie.
 
"Then it's Meg," cried Alice. "Oh, I wish I was fleshy—I've no chance with Syb against Pem."
 
Emily flashed looks of rage; Meg blushed and felt ashamed; Lettie began to recover from her first indignation, and smiled.
 
Thus we went a walk, in two trios.
 
Unfortunately, as the evening was so fine, the roads were full of strollers: groups of three or four men dressed in pale trousers and shiny black cloth coats, following their suspicious little dogs: gangs of youths slouching along, occupied with nothing, often silent, talking now and then in tones on some subject of brief interest: then the husbands, in their tail coats very husbandly, pushing a perambulator, by a much dressed round whom the small members of the family gyrated: occasionally, two lovers walking with a space between them, disowning each other; occasionally, a smartly dressed mother with two little girls in white silk frocks and much expanse of yellow hair, stepping , and, near by, a father awkwardly controlling his Sunday suit.
 
To endure all this it was necessary to unconcernedly. George had to keep up the conversation behind, and he seemed to do it with ease, on the lambs, discussing the breed—when Meg exclaimed:
 
"Oh, aren't they black! They might ha' crept down th' chimney. I never saw any like them before." He described how he had reared two on the bottle, exciting Meg's keen by his mothering of the lambs. Then he went on to the peewits, on the same string: how they would cry and pretend to be wounded—"Just fancy, though!"—and how he had moved the eggs of one pair while he was ploughing, and the mother had followed them, and had even sat watching as he drew near again with the plough, watching him come and go—"Well, she knew you—but they do know those who are kind to them——"
 
"Yes," he agreed, "her little bright eyes seem to speak as you go by."
 
"Oh, I do think they're nice little things—don't you, Lettie?" cried Meg in access of tenderness.
 
Lettie did—with brevity.
 
We walked over the hills and down into Greymede. Meg thought she ought to go home to her grandmother, and George bade her go, saying he would call and see her in an hour or so.
 
The dear girl was disappointed, but she went unmurmuring. We left Alice with a friend, and hurried home through Selsby to escape the after-church parade.
 
As you walk home past Selsby, the pit stands up against the west, with beautiful chimneys marked in black against the swim of sunset, and the head-stocks etched with tall significance on the brightness. Then the houses are in rows of shadow at the foot of these high monuments.
 
"Do you know, Cyril," said Emily, "I have meant to go and see Mrs Annable—the keeper's wife—she's moved into Bonsart's Row, and the children come to school—Oh, it's awful!—they've never been to school, and they are unspeakable."
 
"What's she gone there for?" I asked.
 
"I suppose the wanted the Kennels—and she chose it herself. But the way they live—it's fearful to think of!"
 
"And why haven't you been?"
 
"I don't know—I've meant to—but——" Emily stumbled.
 
"You didn't want, and you daren't?"
 
"Perhaps not—would you?"
 
"Pah—let's go now!—There, you hang back."
 
"No I don't," she replied sharply.
 
"Come on then, we'll go through the twitchel. Let me tell Lettie."
 
Lettie at once declared, "No!"—with some .
 
"All right," said George. "I'll take you home."
 
But this suited Lettie still less.
 
"I don't know what you want to go for, Cyril," she said, "and Sunday night, and, everybody everywhere. I want to go home."
 
"Well—you go then—Emily will come with you."
 
"Ha," cried the latter, "you think I won't go to see her."
 
I my shoulders, and George pulled his moustache.
 
"Well, I don't care," declared Lettie, and we marched down the twitchel, Indian file.
 
We came near to the ugly rows of houses that back up against the pit-hill. Everywhere is black and sooty: the houses are back to back, having only one entrance, which is from a square garden where black-speckled weeds grow sulkily, and which looks on to a row of evil little ash-pit huts. The road everywhere is trodden over with a crust of and coal-dust and .
 
Between the rows, however, was a crowd of women and children, bare heads, bare arms, white , and black Sunday frocks with gimp. One or two men on their heels with their backs against a wall, laughing. The women were waving their arms and screaming up at the roof of the end house.
 
Emily and Lettie drew back.
 
"Look there—it's that little beggar, Sam!" said George.
 
There, sure enough, perched on the of the roof against the end chimney, was the young , coatless, his shirt-sleeves torn away from the . I knew his bright, reddish young head in a moment. He got up, his bare toes clinging to the tiles, and spread out his fingers fanwise from his nose, shouting something, which immediately caused the crowd to toss with indignation, and the women to again. Sam sat down suddenly, having almost lost his balance.
 
The village hurried up, his thin neck stretching out of his , and demanded the cause of the .
 
Immediately a woman with bright brown eyes and a birthmark on her cheek, rushed forward and seized the policeman by the sleeve.
 
"Ta'e 'im up, ta'e 'im up, an' birch 'im till 'is back's raw," she screamed.
 
The thin policeman shook her off, and wanted to know what was the matter.
 
"I'll smosh 'im like a rotten tater," cried the woman, "if I can lay 'ands on 'im. 'E's not fit ter live nowhere where there's decent folks—the thievin', little devil——" thus she went on.
 
"But what's up!" interrupted the thin constable, "what's up wi' 'im?"
 
"Up—it's 'im as 'is up, an' let 'im wait till I get 'im down. A little——"
 
Sam, seeing her look at him, distorted his honest features, and overheated her , till Lettie and Emily trembled with dismay.
 
The mother's head appeared at the bedroom window. She slid the sash back, and craned out, vainly trying to look over the below the . She was even more dishevelled than usual, and the tears had dried on her pale face. She stretched further out, clinging to the window frame and to the gutter overhead, till I was afraid she would come down with a crash.
 
The men, on their heels against the wall of the ashpit, laughed, saying:
 
"Nab 'im, Poll—can ter see 'm—clawk 'im!" and then the pitiful voice of the woman was heard crying: "Come thy ways down, my duckie, come on—on'y come ter thy mother—they shanna touch thee. Du thy mother's biddin', now—Sam—Sam—Sam!" her voice rose higher and higher.
 
"Sammy, Sammy, go to thy mammy," the wits below.
 
"Shonna ter come, Shonna ter come to thy mother, my duckie—come on, come thy ways down."
 
Sam looked at the crowd, and at the eaves from under which rose his mother's voice. He was going to cry. A big gaunt woman, with the family steel comb stuck in her back hair, shouted, "Tha' mun well bend thy face, tha' needs ter scraight," and aided by the woman with the birthmark and the , she him. The little scoundrel, in a burst of , picked a piece of from between the slates, and in a second it flew into fragments against the family steel comb. The wearer thereof declared her head was laid open and there was general confusion. The policeman—I don't know how thin he must have been when he was taken out of his uniform—lost his head, and he too began his fists, spitting from under his sweep's-brush moustache as he commanded in tones of authority:
 
"Now then, no more on it—let's 'a'e thee down here, an' no more messin' about!"
 
The boy tried to creep over the ridge of the roof and escape down the other side. Immediately the rushed round yelling to the other side of the row, and pieces of red-burnt began to fly over the roof. Sam against the chimney.
 
"Got 'im!" yelled one little devil "Got 'im! Hi—go again!"
 
A shower of stones came down, the women and the policeman. The mother rushed from the house and made a wild onslaught on the throwers. She caught one and flung him down. Immediately the rest turned and aimed their missiles at her. Then George and the policeman and I dashed after the young , and the women ran to see what happened to their offspring. We caught two lads of fourteen or so, and made the policeman haul them after us. The rest fled.
 
When we returned to the field of battle, Sam had gone too.
 
"If 'e 'asna slived off!" cried the woman with a squint. "But I'll see him locked up for this."
 
At this moment a band of missioners from one of the or churches arrived at the end of the row, and the little harmonium began to , and the place vibrated with the sound of a woman's powerful voice, round by several others, singing:
 
"At even 'ere the sun was set——"
 
Everybody hurried towards the new noise, save the policeman with his captives, the woman with the squint, and the woman with the family comb. I told the limb of the law he'd better get rid of the two boys and find out what the others were after.
 
Then I of the woman with the squint what was the matter.
 
"Thirty-seven young uns 'an we 'ad from that doe, an' there's no knowin' 'ow many more, if they 'adn't a-gone an' ate-n 'er," she replied, , now her fury was spent, into .
 
"An' niver a word should we a' known," added the family-comb-bearer, "but for that blessed cat of ourn, as scrat it up."
 
"Indeed," said I, "the rabbit?"
 
"No, there were nowt left but th' skin—they'd seen ter that, a thieving, dirt-eatin' lot."
 
"When was that?" said I.
 
"This mortal night—an' there was th' head an' th' back in th' dirty stewpot—I can show you this instant—I've got 'em in our pantry for a proof, 'aven't I, Martha?"
 
"A fat lot o' good it is—but I'll rip th' neck out of 'im, if ever I lay 'ands on 'im."
 
At last I made out that Samuel had stolen a large, lop-eared doe out of a bunch in the coal-house of the squint-eyed lady, had skinned it, buried the skin, and offered his booty to his mother as a wild rabbit, trapped. The doe had been the chief item of the Annables' Sunday dinner—albeit a portion was unluckily saved till Monday, providing undeniable proof of the theft. The owner of the rabbit had supposed the creature to have escaped. This peaceful supposition had been destroyed by the comb-bearer's seeing her cat, scratching in the Annables garden, the white and brown doe-skin, after which the t............