CHAPTER IV.
Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn! For, in
fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped
that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission
intrusted to him; and the right-hand man had slily come back to see if
that amiable expectation were realized. He now beheld Lenny rising with
some difficulty, still panting hard, and with hysterical sounds akin to
what is vulgarly called blubbering, his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with
his own blood, which flowed from his nose,--nose that seemed to Lenny
Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic,
mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence; in fact, he felt all nose!
Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more
respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated
himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether to show
that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of
possession). "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this? What's the
matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"
"He will sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me
because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the
villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I am ready again for
him--that I am."
"And what do you do lollopoping there on them blessed stocks?"
"Looking at the landscape; out of my light, man!"
This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so
disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect; who but
a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn?
"And may I ask who you be?" said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined to
touch his hat. "What Is your name, pray? What's your bizness?"
"My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's
family,--that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr.
Hazeldean's ploughman!"
So saying, Randal rose; and moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing
half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny, "Let that pay you for your
bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman. As for
you, fellow,"--and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr. Stirn, who,
with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the
earth,--"as for you, give my compliments to Mr. Hazeldean, and say that
when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the
manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean."
Oh, my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had
been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again!
With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led
into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose,
and Mr. Stirn still bowing to the earth.
