Mary had been to Goose Fair before, walking there and back; and for
Peter the experience was nothing. Peter had trodden the streets of
Plymouth, and had been long ago to Winkleigh Revel, although he could
recall little of that expedition--the morning after the event he
remembered nothing--but the certainty that he had made the great journey
into the wilds of mid-Devon remained, and there was proof in the
presence of a large mug with a tin handle upon the mantelshelf, bearing
the touching inscription, "Tak' a drop o' gin, old dear," in quaint
lettering, which mug, Peter declared, had come with him from Winkleigh
Revel, although any one curious enough to have turned it upside down
might have discovered "Manor Hotel, Lydford," stamped underneath.
Peter had always felt superior to his sister, apart from the sublime
fact of his manhood. He was not only highly educated, but he had
travelled, and he feared that if Mary travelled too her eyes would be
opened, and she might consider herself his equal. Therefore he had a
distinct motive in begging her to bide at home, although his eloquence
was in vain, for Mary was going to travel. She stated her intention of
walking across the moor to Lydford and catching the train there, which
was needless expense, as she might have gone down to St. Mary Tavy
station; but she desired to make a great journey, something to boast of
in days to come.
A vigil suggests sleeplessness, a watching through the night which
precedes the day of the feast; and Mary observed the vigil more
thoroughly than any nun. Plenty of girls were equally devout at the same
time; keeping awake, not because they wanted to, but because excitement
rendered sleep impossible. Thomasine observed the vigil, and even
Boodles watched and wished the dark gone. It was a long night all over
Dartmoor. Even Siberian Princetown was aroused; and those who were being
punished for their sins had the additional mortification of knowing that
they would be behind prison bars on the day when the greatest saint in
the calendar according to the use of Dartmoor, the blatant and waddling
St. Goose, was to be honoured by a special service of excursion trains
and various instruments of music.
Dawn impelled every maid to glance at the chair beside her bed, to be
sure that the pixies had not run away with her fair-clothes. Thomasine
looked for her completed petticoat, Boodles for her boy's photograph,
Mary for her umbrella. There had been no pixy-pranks, and the day came
in with a promise of sunshine. There were no lie-a-beds that morning.
Even Peter had been restless, and Grandfather possibly noticed that the
little man had not snored so regularly as usual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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