"Well, an' w'at be doin' in my hay?"
"I have been asleep," said I.
"Well, an' what business 'ave ye got a-sleepin' an' a-snorin' in
my hay?"
"I was tired," said I, "and 'Nature her custom holds, let shame
say what it will,' still--I do not think I snored."
"'Ow do I know that--or you, for that matter?" rejoined the
farmer, stroking his glossy whiskers, "hows'ever, if you be quite
awake, come on down out o' my hay." As he said this he eyed me
with rather a truculent air, likewise he clenched his fist.
Thinking it wisest to appear unconscious of this, I nodded affably,
and letting myself down from the hay, was next moment standing
beside him.
"Supposin' I was to thump 'ee on the nose?" he inquired.
"What for?"
"For makin' so free wi' my hay."
"Why then," said I, "I should earnestly endeavor to thump you on
yours."
The farmer looked me slowly over from head to foot, with a
dawning surprise.
"Thought you was a common tramper, I did," said he.
"Why, so I am," I answered, brushing the clinging hay from me.
"Trampers o' the road don't wear gentlemen's clothes--leastways,
I never see one as did." Here his eyes wandered over me again,
from my boots upward. Half-way up, they stopped, evidently
arrested by my waistcoat, a flowered satin of the very latest
cut, for which I had paid forty shillings in the Haymarket,
scarcely a week before; and, as I looked down at it, I would
joyfully have given it, and every waistcoat that was ever cut, to
have had that forty shillings safe back in my pocket again.
"That be a mighty fine weskit, sir!"
"Do you think so?" said I.
"Ah, that I do--w'at might be the cost of a weskit the like o'
that, now?"
"I paid forty shillings for it, in the Haymarket, in London,
scarcely a week ago," I answered. The fellow very slowly closed
one eye at the same time striking his nose three successive raps
with his forefinger: "Gammon!" said he.
"None the less, it's true," said I.
"Any man as would give forty shillin' for a garment as is no
mortal good agen the cold--not reachin' fur enough, even if it do
be silk, an' all worked wi' little flowers--is a dommed fool!--"
"Assuredly!" said I, with a nod.