266 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



' And as I must leave them (I trust but for a little 

 while) I will leave them on the brown oak timber, sap- 

 stain brown, in the sunshine and dancing shadow of 

 summer, among the long grass and the wild flowers.'* 



Five or six days fill the book. First, a March day, when 

 Amaryllis finds a daffodil in the garden and her father is 

 planting potatoes, and he talks to her about her great- 

 uncle Richard ; dinner follows, and Iden is left alone to 

 muse as he has done for thirty years, while the mice run 

 up to his knee and eat the crumbs of his bread and cheese. 

 Second is Lady Day, Fair Day ; Amaryllis watches the 

 fair-goers, the tramps, the farmers, the labourers, the 

 cattle and sheep, and one Jack Duck comes in to gossip 

 and take some of Iden's ' Goliath ale.' Amaryllis herself 

 goes to the fair, calls on Grandfather Iden (reputed to 

 have twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his 

 bed), and has dinner with the crowd of relatives who come, 

 each to receive a sovereign from the old man, and the 

 most pleasing of them a spade guinea. Amaryllis wins 

 the guinea, but throws it away in her impatient dislike 

 of the old man, who does not help her father : then the 

 two go out into the crowd, from which the grandfather 

 takes her to see the manor-house of the Pamment family ; 

 she runs away, and her people at Coombe Oaks are 

 delighted at her rebellion. Third, the day — many days 

 in one — when she sits up in the attic and tries to draw, but 

 is too unhappy because it is cold and the duns never let 

 her father rest. Then come the days in May when Iden, 

 Alere, Amadis, and Amaryllis talk in the round summer- 

 house ; and Alere suggests thoughts on Fleet Street, 

 Amadis on health, and Amaryllis on love. The char- 

 acters limn themselves in thought and speech and act, 

 and out of these few days spring Jefferies' thoughts on 

 the life which he himself had seen and endured — the life of 

 thoughtful or passionate people swayed by poverty, by 

 ill-health, and by the products of their thoughts and 

 passions, whims, bad temper, generosity, disappointment, 



* A mar y His at the Fair. 



