DOI article:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: My Note-Book in the Weald
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25498#0058
^4 My Note-Book in the Weald
Nobody told me this, but when the Wedding March ultimately
started, and the party and the four eighteens, and the crowd and
a number of the beagle puppies got under weigh for the cricket-
ground, George could be seen striding glumly homeward with the
disconsolate and silent oboe in a bag.
At first an air of delicate reserve hung over the populace, and
the large white jugs moved slowly above the glasses ; there was a
tendency to dawdle in the neighbourhood of the “ whelk and
winkle barrow,” which had taken up a promising corner, but
kindly dusk hid many blushes, and with nightfall all tremors were
dispersed, and, since it was there . . . they might as well . . .
and so they did.
It was, I say it with pain, a very drunk village, and a very gay
inn by eleven o’clock that night. But then a landlord is not
married every day, and who knows how dull things may be when
“ The Merry Hedgehog ” has a missis ?
There was but one clear head (I am excepting the Rev. and
Mrs. Sollop, of course) and two sore hearts upon the green that
night. Mine was the clear head. George’s was one of the sore
hearts (unless the oboe had one, and that would make a third) and
Mrs. Groves, the housekeeper, who had to have a good deal of
whisky and very little else, in a claret glass, at intervals during
the evening—hers was the other.
“ A twelvemonth ago there wasn’t one but would have said it
would be ’er,” Mr. Brewer Quarpitt kept repeating a suspicious
number of times as he slapped the big white horse confidingly,
till every link upon the waggon gave out a note of music. And
then, “ Never see such a mort o’ beer put down so quick in my
life,” and he gathered up his reins and jangled gaily off upon his
homeward way. And I shut down my window to avoid the
hymeneal comments of the rustics below.
Nobody told me this, but when the Wedding March ultimately
started, and the party and the four eighteens, and the crowd and
a number of the beagle puppies got under weigh for the cricket-
ground, George could be seen striding glumly homeward with the
disconsolate and silent oboe in a bag.
At first an air of delicate reserve hung over the populace, and
the large white jugs moved slowly above the glasses ; there was a
tendency to dawdle in the neighbourhood of the “ whelk and
winkle barrow,” which had taken up a promising corner, but
kindly dusk hid many blushes, and with nightfall all tremors were
dispersed, and, since it was there . . . they might as well . . .
and so they did.
It was, I say it with pain, a very drunk village, and a very gay
inn by eleven o’clock that night. But then a landlord is not
married every day, and who knows how dull things may be when
“ The Merry Hedgehog ” has a missis ?
There was but one clear head (I am excepting the Rev. and
Mrs. Sollop, of course) and two sore hearts upon the green that
night. Mine was the clear head. George’s was one of the sore
hearts (unless the oboe had one, and that would make a third) and
Mrs. Groves, the housekeeper, who had to have a good deal of
whisky and very little else, in a claret glass, at intervals during
the evening—hers was the other.
“ A twelvemonth ago there wasn’t one but would have said it
would be ’er,” Mr. Brewer Quarpitt kept repeating a suspicious
number of times as he slapped the big white horse confidingly,
till every link upon the waggon gave out a note of music. And
then, “ Never see such a mort o’ beer put down so quick in my
life,” and he gathered up his reins and jangled gaily off upon his
homeward way. And I shut down my window to avoid the
hymeneal comments of the rustics below.