Mortal full of senseless questions, too, fit to make anybody
laugh!--Whereat overcome by joyous memories of human folly, he opened the
red cavern of his apparently toothless mouth, barking up audible mirth,
brief and husky, from the depth of a beer-slaked throat.
He leaned forward while speaking, resting chest and elbows on the
oars--only now and again dipping the blades in the water to steady the
boat in its course as it moved smoothly onward borne by brimming stream
and tide. From out the shadow of his thimble-crowned hat he looked up
knowingly, with the freemasonry of assured good-temper at Tom, who stood
before him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions
for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of
chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical
South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order.
Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet
non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the
pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, was a
master of primitive knowledge and of arts not taught in modern Board (or
any other) Schools; a merry fellow too, who could, as Tom divined, when
company and circumstances allowed, be broadly, unprintably humorous.
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