Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

35. CHAPTER XXXV: MISS THORNE'S FETE CHAMPETRE (continued)

'I am quite sure you are not an old man, Wilfred,' said she, accepting the apology in her heart, and smiling at him with the tear still on her cheek.

'If I was five-and-twenty, or thirty,' continued he, 'I should like nothing better than riding at the quintain all day.'

'But you are not too old to hunt or to shoot,' said she. 'If you can jump over a ditch and hedge, I am sure you could turn the quintain round.'

'But when I ride over the hedges, my dear--and it isn't very often I do that--but when I do ride over the hedges there isn't any bag of flour coming after me. Think how I'd look taking the countess out to breakfast with the back of my head all covered with meal.'

Miss Thorne said nothing further. She didn't like the allusion to the countess. She couldn't be satisfied with the reflection that the sports of Ullathorne should be interfered with by the personal attentions necessary for a Lady de Courcy. But she saw that it was useless for her to push the matter further. It was conceded that Mr Thorne was to spared the quintain; and Miss Thorne determined to trust wholly to a youthful knight of hers, an immense favourite, who, as she often declared, was a pattern to the young men of the age, and an excellent example of an English yeoman.

This was Farmer Greenacre's eldest son; who, to tell the truth, had from his earliest years taken the exact measure of Miss Thorne's foot. In his boyhood he had never failed to obtain from her, apples, pocket money, and forgiveness for his numerous trespasses; and now in his early manhood he got privileges and immunities which were equally valuable. He was allowed a day or two's shooting in September; he schooled the squire's horses; got slips of trees out of the orchard, and roots of flowers out of the garden; and had the fishing of the little river altogether in his own hands. He had undertaken to come mounted on a nag of his father's, and show the way at the quintain post. Whatever young Greenacre did the others would do after him. The juvenile Lookalofts might stand sure to venture if Harry Greenacre showed the way. And so Miss Thorne made up her mind to dispense with the noble Johns and Georges, and trust, as her ancestors had done before her, to the thews and sinews of native Ullathorne growth.