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 realised. 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'm ready again
for him--that I am."
"And what do you do, lolloping, 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's your name, pray, and 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."
O my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had
ever 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.