The Elderbrook Brothers by Gerald Bullet Read Free Book Online

into clean boots, and give himself a good brush down, and fetch his jacket from its peg in the byre. He was in two minds whether or not to put on his town-going clothes; but Father had said nothing of that, and maybe it would take too much time. A luckyconclusion, as it turned out; for by the time he got to the stable-yard there was Joe,, already seated in the trap, reins in hand, and with eyebrows shooting up in a way that boded ill for anyone who should delay him further. Seeing Matthew he set the pony moving at a walking pace towards the road, leaving Matthew to follow.
    â€˜Jump up, boy, or we shan’t be there by dark!’
    Since nearly three hours of daylight remained, the remark served no purpose but to show that Joe was nettled. Matthew, having first shut the gate behind him, jumped in as he was bidden, and pony and trap moved off at a sharp trot down the road. Matthew’s elation was sensibly diminished by his failure to do the impossible—finish the milking and harness the pony, all in five minutes—and for a moment he resented his father’s having put him in the wrong by first asking him to get the trap out and then impatiently doing it himself. That’s Father all over, he thought. But his resentment was as short-lived as Joe’s ill humour, and father and son were in good spirits when they drove up to the entrance of the Lutterthorpe bowling green half-an-hour later.
    Their reception was in keeping with the importance, for Matthew, of the occasion.
    â€˜How do, Mr Elderbrook!’—‘How do, Charlie!’
    â€˜Evening, Joe!’—‘How’s yourself, boy?’
    â€˜Here we are again, old soldier!’—‘Large as life, Harry.’
    It gratified Matthew, increased his own stature, to find his father so well liked by these strangers. Some indeed were not strangers entirely. Charlie Meadows he had seen at market, and Fletching, the long lean dark-browed baker, was known to everybody; but for the most part these faces were unfamiliar to Matthew. So was the scene itself, though often enough from the roadway he had caught a glimpse, through the narrow copse of beeches that flanked it, of the level green, the smooth shaven grass terrace jutting like a giant stair out of the sloping ground. Now he saw it near at hand and in another aspect, with a wide grass way going up past and beyond to its left, a broadcurving byway of the river to its right, and behind all, rising steeply, the wooded hill. On a ledge above the green stood a shed or miniature pavilion in which were kept the roller and the mower and a few deck-chairs and a spare set or two of bowls for the chancecome visitor.
    â€˜Not me, boy, I’ve brought me own,’ said Joe, declining an invitation before recognizing it as a joke. ‘Ha, you know that, you rascal! Fetch ’em, Matt, will ye? We left ’em in the trap.’
    Things proceed at a leisurely pace on a leisurely occasion, and five minutes more of daylight were gone before the players, having taken each his precious pair of woods out of the russet canvas bag in which he carried them, and having sagaciously weighed each one in the palm of the hand, at last settled down, not to the game itself, for they were still an odd number, but to play the trial ends, once up and once down, to see how the rink was, whether heavy and slow, or sleek and easygoing. The green was divided by chalklines into three rinks, and of these number one was voted the best. Even had it not been so, Jimmie Andrews the groundsman, who had spent hours at it with the roller, would never have suffered them to use any other tonight. ‘She runs pretty sweet,’ was the general verdict, to which the knowing Mr Elderbrook added, in an aside to his son: ‘And pretty fast too, you mark my words, boy!’
    Matthew had no motive for marking his father’s words beyond a spectator’s interest in the game, and his attention was a little distracted