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The Pigeon Pie
The Pigeon Pie
CHAPTER I
Early in the September of the year 1651 the afternoon sun was shining pleasantly into the dining-hall of Forest Lea House. The sunshine came through a large bay-window, glazed in diamonds, and with long branches of a vine trailing across it, but in parts the glass had been broken and had never been mended. The walls were wainscoted with dark oak, as well as the floor, which shone bright with rubbing, and stag’s antlers projected from them, on which hung a sword in its sheath, one or two odd gauntlets, an old-fashioned helmet, a gun, some bows and arrows, and two of the broad shady hats then in use, one with a drooping black feather, the other plainer and a good deal the worse for wear, both of a small size, as if belonging to a young boy.
An oaken screen crossed the hall, close to the front door, and there was a large open fireplace, a settle on each side under the great yawning chimney, where however at present no fire was burning. Before it was a long dining-table covered towards the upper end with a delicately white cloth, on which stood, however, a few trenchers, plain drinking-horns, and a large old-fashioned black-jack, that is to say, a pitcher formed of leather. An armchair was at the head of the table, and heavy oaken benches along the side.
A little boy of six years old sat astride on the end of one of the benches, round which he had thrown a bridle of plaited rushes, and, with a switch in his other hand, was springing himself up and down, calling out, “Come, Eleanor, come, Lucy; come and ride on a pillion behind me to Worcester, to see King Charles and brother Edmund.”
“I’ll come, I am coming!” cried Eleanor, a little girl about a year older, her hair put tightly away under a plain round cap, and she was soon perched sideways behind her brother.
“Oh, fie, Mistress Eleanor; why, you would not ride to the wars?” This was said by a woman of about four or five-and-twenty, tall, thin and spare, with a high colour, sharp black eyes, and a waist which the long stiff stays, laced in front, had pinched in till it was not much bigger than a wasp’s, while her quilted green petticoat, standing out full below it, showed a very trim pair of ankles encased in scarlet stockings, and a pair of bony red arms came forth from the full short sleeves of a sort of white jacket, gathered in at the waist. She was clattering backwards and forwards, removing the dinner things, and talking to the children as she did so in a sharp shrill tone: “Such a racket as you make, to be sure, and how you can have the heart to do so I can’t guess, not I, considering what may be doing this very moment.”
“Oh, but Walter says they will all come back again, brother Edmund, and Diggory, and all,” said little Eleanor, “and then we shall be merry.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, who, though two years older, wore the same prim round cap and long frock as her little sister, “then we shall have Edmund here again. You can’t remember him at all, Eleanor and Charlie, for we have not seen him these six years!”
“No,” said Deborah, the maid. “Ah! these be weary wars, what won’t let a gentleman live at home in peace, nor his poor servants, who have no call to them.”
“For shame, Deb!” cried Lucy; “are not you the King’s own subject?”
But Deborah maundered on, “It is all very well for gentlefolks, but now it had all got quiet again, ’tis mortal hard it should be stirred up afresh, and a poor soul marched off, he don’t know where, to fight with he don’t know who, for he don’t know what.”