Puck of Pook's Hill: Ch. 8: Hal O' the Draft

Ch. 8: Hal O' the Draft

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.

When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
But Oh, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's nothing Nineveh Town can give
(Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,
That don't care nothing what he has been.
He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.

***

A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates
in the Little Mill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and
oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors
and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts,
is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window,
called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens
Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it
'the mainmast tree', out of the ballad of Sir Andrew
Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and main', as the
ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck Window-sill.
He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight
plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See
what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe - pardon, Hal -
says I am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.'

The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the
children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy
fringe. He was old - forty at least - but his eyes were
young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A
satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt,
which looked interesting.

'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.

'Surely - sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-
seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed
pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on
his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain
fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen
from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife,
carved in the semblance of a fish.
'Oh, what a beauty!' cried Dan.

''Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it
myself of the best Low Country cross-bow steel. And so,
too, this fish. When his back-fin travels to his tail - so - he
swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed
Gaffer Jonah ... Yes, and that's my inkhorn. I made the
four silver saints round it. Press Barnabas's head. It
opens, and then -'He dipped the trimmed pen, and with
careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of
Puck's rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by
the silver-point.

The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.

As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked -
now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown
or smile at his work. He told them he was born at Little
Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing
things instead of doing things, till an old priest called
Father Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich
people's books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy
as a sort of painter's apprentice. Then he went with
Father Roger to Oxford, where he cleaned plates and
carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a College
called Merton.

'Didn't you hate that?' said Dan after a great many
other questions.

'I never thought on't. Half Oxford was building new
colleges or beautifying the old, and she had called to her
aid the master-craftsmen of all Christendie - kings in
their trade and honoured of Kings. I knew them. I
worked for them: that was enough. No wonder -' He stopped
and laughed.

'You became a great man, Hal,' said Puck.

'They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.'

'Why? What did you do?' Dan asked.

The artist looked at him queerly. 'Things in stone and
such, up and down England. You would not have heard
of 'em. To come nearer home, I rebuilded this little St
Barnabas' church of ours. It cost me more trouble and
sorrow than aught I've touched in my life. But 'twas a
sound lesson.'

'Um,' said Dan. 'We've had lessons this morning.'

'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared.
'Only 'tis strange to think how that little church was
rebuilt, re-roofed, and made glorious, thanks to some
few godly Sussex ironmasters, a Bristow sailor lad, a
proud ass called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he
was always drawing and drafting; and'- he dragged the
words slowly -'and a Scotch pirate.'

'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on
the stair just now.' He dipped again in the inkwell, and
held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had
forgotten everything else.

'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or
do they?'

'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at
your lessons this morn, Jack Scholar.'

'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his
silly old spider,' said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton
help you?'
'I question if he ever knew it,' said Hal, twinkling.
'Robin, how a' mischief's name am I to tell these
innocents what comes of sinful pride?'

'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you
get too beany - that's cheeky - you get sat upon, of course.'

Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said
some long words.

'A,ha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany - you say
- but certainly I did not conduct myself well. I was proud
of - of such things as porches - a Galilee porch at Lincoln
for choice - proud of one Torrigiano's arm on my
shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the gilt
scroll-work for the Sovereign - our King's ship. But Father
Roger sitting in Merton College Library, he did not forget
me. At the top of my pride, when I and no other should
have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a
terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and
rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us
Dawes have been buried for six generations. "Out! Son of
my Art!" said he. "Fight the Devil at home ere you call
yourself a man and a craftsman." And I quaked, and I
went ... How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the finished
sketch before Puck.

'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a
man at a mirror. 'Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate
housen in daylight.'

'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for
my Little Lindens? We can talk there.'

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the
dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam.

'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop-garden,
where the hops were just ready to blossom. 'What are
these? Vines? No, not vines, and they twine the wrong
way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.

'Hops. New since your day,' said Puck. 'They're an
herb of Mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale. We
say -

'Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer
Came into England all in one year.'

'Heresy I know. I've seen Hops - God be praised for
their beauty! What is your Turkis?'

The children laughed. They knew the Lindens turkeys,
and as soon as they reached Lindens orchard on the hill
the full flock charged at them.

Out came Hal's book at once. 'Hoity-toity!' he cried.
'Here's Pride in purple feathers! Here's wrathy contempt
and the Pomps of the Flesh! How d'you call them?'

'Turkeys! Turkeys!' the children shouted, as the old
gobbler raved and flamed against Hal's plum-coloured hose.

"Save Your Magnificence!' he said. 'I've drafted two
good new things today.' And he doffed his cap to the
bubbling bird.

Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where
Little Lindens stands. The old farmhouse, weather-tiled
to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in
the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in
the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the
tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their
booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-
window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread
after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

The farmer's wife came to the door, baby on arm,
shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a
sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. The old
spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was
in charge of the empty house. Puck clicked back the
garden-gate.

'D'you marvel that I love it?' said Hal, in a whisper.
'What can town folk know of the nature of housen - or land?'
They perched themselves arow on the old hacked oak
bench in Lindens garden, looking across the valley of the
brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the
Forge behind Hobden's cottage. The old man was cutting
a faggot in his garden by the hives. It was quite a second
after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached
their lazy ears.

'Eh - yeh!' said Hal. 'I mind when where that old gaffer
stands was Nether Forge - Master John Collins's
foundry. Many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me
in my bed here. Boom-bitty! Boom-bitty! If the wind was
east, I could hear Master Tom Collins's forge at Stockens
answering his brother, Boom-oop! Boom-oop! and midway
between, Sir John Pelham's sledgehammers at Brightling
would strike in like a pack o' scholars, and "Hic-haec-hoc"
they'd say, "Hic-haec-hoc, " till I fell asleep. Yes. The valley
was as full o' forges and fineries as a May shaw o'
cuckoos. All gone to grass now!'

'What did they make?' said Dan.
'Guns for the King's ships - and for others. Serpentines
and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down
would come the King's Officers, and take our plough-
oxen to haul them to the coast. Look! Here's one of the
first and finest craftsmen of the Sea!'

He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed
them a young man's head. Underneath was written:
'Sebastianus.'

'He came down with a King's Order on Master John
Collins for twenty serpentines (wicked little cannon they
be!) to furnish a venture of ships. I drafted him thus
sitting by our fire telling Mother of the new lands he'd
find the far side the world. And he found them, too!
There's a nose to cleave through unknown seas! Cabot
was his name - a Bristol lad - half a foreigner. I set a heap
by him. He helped me to my church-building.'

'I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton,' said Dan.

'Ay, but foundations before roofs,' Hal answered.
'Sebastian first put me in the way of it. I had come down
here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show
my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not,
and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my
greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell
with old St Barnabas'? Ruinous the church had been since
the Black Death, and ruinous she would remain; and I
could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and
simple, high and low - the Hayes, the Fowles, the
Fenners, the Collinses - they were all in a tale against me.
Only Sir John Pelham up yonder at Brightling bade me
heart-up and go on. Yet how could I? Did I ask Master
Collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? The oxen had
gone to Lewes after lime. Did he promise me a set of iron
cramps or ties for the roof? They never came to hand, or
else they were spaulty or cracked. So with everything.
Nothing said, but naught done except I stood by them,
and then done amiss. I thought the countryside was fair bewitched.'

'It was, sure-ly,' said Puck, knees under chin. 'Did you
never suspect ary one?'

'Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins
played him the same dog's tricks as he'd played me with
my ironwork. Week in, week out, two of three serpentines
would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they
said, to be re-melted. Then John Collins would shake his
head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the King's
service that were not perfect. Saints! How Sebastian
stormed! I know, for we sat on this bench sharing our
sorrows inter-common.

'When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Lindens
and gotten just six serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, Master of
the Cygnet hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he
was fetching me from France for our new font he'd hove
overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton
up to Rye Port.'

'Ah! The pirate!' said Dan.

'Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this,
Ticehurst Will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and
vowing that the Devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has
run out on him from the church-tower, and the men
would work there no more. So I took 'em off the foundations,
which we were strengthening, and went into the
Bell Tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins:
"Have it your own way, lad; but if I was you, I'd take the
sinnification o' the sign, and leave old Barnabas' Church
alone!" And they all wagged their sinful heads, and
agreed. Less afraid of the Devil than of me - as I saw later.

'When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian
was limewashing the kitchen-beams for Mother. He
loved her like a son.

"'Cheer up, lad," he says. "God's where He was. Only
you and I chance to be pure pute asses. We've been
tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that I did
not guess it before! You must leave your belfry alone,
forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot
get my serpentines because John Collins cannot cast
them aright. Meantime Andrew Barton hawks off the
Port of Rye. And why? To take those very serpentines
which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines,
I'll wager my share of new continents, being now hid
away in St Barnabas' church-tower. Clear as the Irish
coast at noonday!"

"They'd sure never dare to do it," I said; "and, for
another thing, selling cannon to the King's enemies is
black treason - hanging and fine."

"'It is sure, large profit. Men'll dare any gallows for
that. I have been a trader myself," says he. "We must be
upsides with 'em for the honour of Bristol."

'Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash
bucket. We gave out to ride o' Tuesday to London and
made a show of taking farewells of our friends - especially
of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we
turned; rode home to the water-meadows; hid our horses
in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night,
stole a-tiptoe uphill to Barnabas' church again. A thick
mist, and a moon striking through.
'I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than
over goes Sebastian full length in the dark.

"'Pest!" he says. "Step high and feel low, Hal. I've
stumbled over guns before."

'I groped, and one by one - the tower was pitchy dark -
I counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out
on pease straw. No conceal at all!

"'There's two demi-cannon my end," says Sebastian,
slapping metal. "They'll be for Andrew Barton's lower
deck. Honest - honest John Collins! So this is his ware-
house, his arsenal, his armoury! Now see you why your
pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex?
You've hindered John's lawful trade for months," and he
laughed where he lay.

'A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we
climbed the belfry stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a
cow-hide with its horns and tail.

"'Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become
me, Hal?" He draws it on and capers in the shafts of
window-moonlight - won'erful devilish-like. Then he
sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his
back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit
in, and screeched at the horns of him.

"'If you'd keep out the Devil, shut the door," he
whispered. "And that's another false proverb, Hal, for I
can hear your tower-door opening."

"'I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?" I said.

"'All the congregation, to judge by their feet," he says,
and peers into the blackness. "Still! Still, Hal! Hear 'em
grunt! That's more o' my serpentines, I'll be bound. One
- two - three - four they bear in! Faith, Andrew equips
himself like an Admiral! Twenty-four serpentines in all!"

'As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins's
voice come up all hollow: "Twenty-four serpentines and
two demi-cannon. That's the full tally for Sir Andrew Barton."

"'Courtesy costs naught," whispers Sebastian. "Shall
I drop my dagger on his head?"

"'They go over to Rye o' Thursday in the wool-wains,
hid under the wool-packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at
Udimore, as before," says John.

"'Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!" says
Sebastian. "I lay we are the sole two babes in the village
that have not our lawful share in the venture."

'There was a full score folk below, talking like all
Robertsbridge Market. We counted them by voice.

'Master John Collins pipes: "The guns for the French
carrack must lie here next month. Will, when does your
young fool" (me, so please you!) "come back from
Lunnon?"

"'No odds," I heard Ticehurst Will answer. "Lay 'em
just where you've a mind, Mus' Collins. We're all too
afraid o' the Devil to mell with the tower now." And the
long knave laughed.

"'Ah! 'tis easy enow for you to raise the Devil, Will,"
says another - Ralph Hobden of the Forge.

"'Aaa-men!" roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him,
he leaps down the stairs - won'erful devilish-like
howling no bounds. He had scarce time to lay out for the
nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran! We heard
them pound on the door of the Bell Tavern, and then we
ran too.

"'What's next?" says Sebastian, looping up his cow-
tail as he leaped the briars. "I've broke honest John's face."

"'Ride to Sir John Pelham's," I said. "He is the only
one that ever stood by me."

'We rode to Brightling, and past Sir John's lodges,
where the keepers would have shot at us for deer-
stealers, and we had Sir John down into his Justice's
chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed
him the cow-hide which Sebastian wore still girt about
him, he laughed till the tears ran.

"'Wel-a-well!" he says. "I'll see justice done before
daylight. What's your complaint? Master Collins is my
old friend."

"'He's none of mine," I cried. "When I think how he
and his likes have baulked and dozened and cozened me
at every turn over the church" - and I choked at the thought.

"'Ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use,"
says he smoothly.

also they did my serpentines," Sebastian cries. "I
should be half across the Western Ocean by now if my
guns had been ready. But they're sold to a Scotch pirate
by your old friend -"

"'Where's your proof?" says Sir John, stroking his beard.

"'I broke my shins over them not an hour since, and I
heard John give order where they were to be taken," says Sebastian.

"'Words! Words only," says Sir John. "Master Collins
is somewhat of a liar at best."

'He carried it so gravely that, for the moment, I thought
he was dipped in this secret traffick too, and that there
was not an honest ironmaster in Sussex.

"'Name o' Reason!" says Sebastian, and raps with his
cow-tail on the table, "whose guns are they, then?"

"'Yours, manifestly," says Sir John. "You come with
the King's Order for 'em, and Master Collins casts them
in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from
Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church-tower, why,
they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and
you are saved a day's hauling. What a coil to make of a
mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!"

"'I fear I have requited him very scurvily," says
Sebastian, looking at his knuckles. "But what of the
demi-cannon? I could do with 'em well, but they are not in
the King's Order."

"'Kindness - loving-kindness," says Sir John. "Questionless,
in his zeal for the King and his love for you, John
adds those two cannon as a gift. 'Tis plain as this coming
daylight, ye stockfish!"

"'So it is," says Sebastian. "Oh, Sir John, Sir John, why
did you never use the sea? You are lost ashore." And he
looked on him with great love.

"'I do my best in my station." Sir John strokes his
beard again and rolls forth his deep drumming Justice's
voice thus: "But - suffer me! - you two lads, on some
midnight frolic into which I probe not, roystering around
the taverns, surprise Master Collins at his" - he thinks a
moment - "at his good deeds done by stealth. Ye surprise
him, I say, cruelly."

"'Truth, Sir John. If you had seen him run!" says Sebastian.

"'On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of
pirates, and wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though
it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as
a magistrate. So I will e'en accompany you back to the
tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and
three-four wagons, and I'll be your warrant that Master
John Collins will freely give you your guns and your
demi-cannon, Master Sebastian." He breaks into his
proper voice - "I warned the old tod and his neighbours
long ago that they'd come to trouble with their side-
sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half
Sussex hanged for a little gun-running. Are ye content, lads?"

"'I'd commit any treason for two demi-cannon, said
Sebastian, and rubs his hands.

,"Ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony
for the same bribe," says Sir John. "Wherefore to horse,
and get the guns."'

'But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew
Barton all along, didn't he?' said Dan.

'Questionless, that he did,' said Hal. 'But he lost them.
We poured into the village on the red edge of dawn, Sir
John horsed, in half-armour, his pennon flying; behind
him thirty stout Brightling knaves, five abreast; behind
them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets
to triumph over the jest, blowing: Our King went forth to
Normandie. When we halted and rolled the ringing guns
out of the tower, 'twas for all the world like Friar Roger's
picture of the French siege in the Queen's Missal-book.'

'And what did we - I mean, what did our village do?' said Dan.

'Oh! Bore it nobly - nobly,' cried Hal. 'Though they
had tricked me, I was proud of them. They came out of
their housen, looked at that little army as though it had
been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. Never a
sign! Never a word! They'd ha' perished sooner than let
Brightling overcrow us. Even that villain, Ticehurst Will,
coming out of the Bell for his morning ale, he all but runs
under Sir John's horse.

"''Ware, Sirrah Devil!" cries Sir John, reining back.

"'Oh!" says Will. "Market-day, is it? And all the
bullocks from Brightling here?"

'I spared him his belting for that - the brazen knave!

'But John Collins was our masterpiece! He happened
along-street (his jaw tied up where Sebastian had clouted
him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon
through the lych-gate.

"'I reckon you'll find her middlin' heavy," he says. "If
you've a mind to pay, I'll loan ye my timber-tug. She
won't lie easy on ary wool-wain."

'That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flat
aback. He opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like.

"'No offence," says Master John. "You've got her
reasonable good cheap. I thought ye might not grudge
me a groat if I helped move her." Ah, he was a masterpiece!
They say that morning's work cost our John two
hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not
even when he saw the guns all carted off to Lewes.'

'Neither then nor later?' said Puck.

'Once. 'Twas after he gave St Barnabas' the new chime
of bells. (Oh, there was nothing the Collinses, or the
Hayes, or the Fowles, or the Fenners would not do for the
church then! "Ask and have" was their song.) We had
rung 'em in, and he was in the tower with Black Nick
Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old man
pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck
with t'other. "Sooner she was pulling yon clapper than
my neck, he says. That was all! That was Sussex
seely Sussex for everlasting'

'And what happened after?' said Una.

'I went back into England,' said Hal, slowly. 'I'd
had my lesson against pride. But they tell me I left St
Barnabas' a jewel - justabout a jewel! Wel-a-well! 'Twas
done for and among my own people, and - Father Roger
was right - I never knew such trouble or such triumph
since. That's the nature o' things. A dear - dear land.' He
dropped his chin on his chest.

'There's your Father at the Forge. What's he talking to
old Hobden about?' said Puck, opening his hand with
three leaves in it.

Dan looked towards the cottage.

'Oh, I know. It's that old oak lying across the brook.
Pater always wants it grubbed.'

In the still valley they could hear old Hobden's deep tones.

'Have it as you've a mind to,' he was saying. 'But the
vivers of her roots they hold the bank together. If you
grub her out, the bank she'll all come tearin' down, an'
next floods the brook'll swarve up . But have it as you've a
mind. The Mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk.

'Oh! I'll think it over,' said the Pater.

Una laughed a little bubbling chuckle.

'What Devil's in that belfry?' said Hal, with a lazy
laugh. 'That should be a Hobden by his voice.'

'Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits
between the Three Acre and our meadow. The best place
for wires on the farm, Hobden says. He's got two
there now,' Una answered. 'He won't ever let it be grubbed!'

'Ah, Sussex! Seely Sussex for everlastin',' murmured
Hal; and the next moment their Father's voice calling
across to Little Lindens broke the spell as little
St Barnabas' clock struck five.

A Smugglers' Song

If You wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

     Five-and-twenty ponies,
     Trotting through the dark -
     Brandy for the Parson,
     'Baccy for the Clerk;
     Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
     And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine;
Don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em for your play;
Put the brushwood back again, - and they'll be gone next day!
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm - don't you ask no more!

If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been!

Knocks and footsteps round the house - whistles after dark -
You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty's here, and Pincher's here, and see how dumb they lie -
They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!

If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

     Five-and-twenty ponies,
     Trotting through the dark -
     Brandy for the Parson,
     'Baccy for the Clerk.
     Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
     Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

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