Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/529

31, 1863.]

“!” cried David Battiscombe to the Squire, rushing into the supper-room, on a fine May evening, “may not Tony and I ride the downs to-morrow after the bustards?”

“There will be such a hunt!” Tony exclaimed. “All the fellows that have horses are going; and every greyhound for twenty miles round will be there. You will let us go, father?”

The Squire looked them in the face a minute before he replied, with the question,

“Can you tell me the day of the month?”

“No,—not I,” said David. “M. Florien used to keep count of such things for us. Since he went we have never known where we were; and that is the reason why Mr. Defoe, and even Joanna there, made game of me on All Fools’ Day. Let us ask Nurse, Tony; she has a story ready for every day of the year.”

“Stay, my son; do not go,” said his mother. “This day is the 28th of May.”

“O, the fast!” cried the boys, dolefully. “Of all days, that Restoration Day should be fixed on for the bustard-hunt!”

“It is done on purpose,” Arabella observed. “There is always something of the sort on Restoration Day, to make it as gay as a fair. It was on the 29th that they caught and baited the Charmouth witch.”

“And last year,” said Tony, “they went after the pair of fen-eagles that frightened the fishermen so. It is very hard that there are hunts just when we cannot go. I suppose,” and the boy flushed up with daring, “I suppose we may not go?”

“My son, it is our fast-day,” said his mother. “For every feast-day that the loose world’s people make, God’s people are constrained to have a fast.”

“I think there are more every year,” Tony observed. “I wonder what it will come to.”

“I will tell you what the Lord’s people think it will come to,” said the Squire, drawing Tony towards him, and putting his arm over the boy’s