' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 273 



characters. He cannot detach himself from them and let 

 their characters work out a doom. He is up and among 

 them all the time, and they have him, like Rabelais, seeing 

 he cannot be their fellow-soldier, 'for their faithful brother, 

 refreshing and cheering, according to his little power, 

 their return from the alarms of the enemy.' He moves 

 from one to the other, hstening for the music swept out of 

 them, praising them, fearing for them — in fact, one of them, 

 the chief character, at once the protagonist and the chorus. 



Iden is drawn in the same way, a strong, handsome, 

 honest, generous man, deserving to live and glorify life, 

 but inevitably going under the sea of debt, of failure, of 

 a good, misunderstanding, nervous wife, of ' Fate.' He 

 plants his potatoes himself, stooping in his ragged coat 

 while the March wind blows : 



' The way in which he was planting potatoes was wonder- 

 ful, every potato was placed at exactly the right distance 

 apart, and a hole made for it in the general trench ; before 

 it was set it was looked at and turned over, and the thumb 

 rubbed against it to be sure that it was sound, and when 

 finally put in, a little mould was delicately adjusted round 

 to keep it in its right position till the whole row was 

 buried. He carried the potatoes in his coat-pocket — 

 those, that is, for the row — and took them out one by 

 one ; had he been planting his own children he could not 

 have been more careful.' * 



He was ' always at work, and he could talk so cleverly, 

 too,' thinks Amaryllis ; ' and knew everything, and yet 

 they were so short of money. How could this be ?' Her 

 wonder at this is like Jefferies' wonder that the human 

 race has not yet built a barn for its own use. But Iden 

 will have his mutton good, fetching it himself in a flag 

 basket, and seeing that it is hung. 



' No one could do it right but Mr. Iden himself. There 

 was a good deal of reason in this personal care of the meat, 

 for it is a certain fact that unless you do look after such 

 things yourself, and that persistently, too, you never get 



* Amaryllis at the Fair. 



18 



