Job Lackland meanwhile had struck up a tune on his crazy fiddle, and made the air gay with his old jingling melody, until the tapping of Gorwyn’s little drum announced a fresh event; this was a race after a cheese down the steepest side of the hill, an all-but-perpendicular bank, round which the ordinary pedestrian would have skirted, but the lads started down it helter-skelter after the round cheese which was bowling down, bumping and jumping, after its send-off push. Some few of them kept their feet, others slithered down on their backsides, like boys on an ice-slide, some in their effort to keep upright tumbled head over heels; one, a wag, went down, rolled round in a ball, hands locked under knees, in a series of somersaults. No one was hurt, and the girls peering after them over the top, laughed and danced in delight as the medley of arms and legs and bodies reached the bottom, and a scrum for the prize ensued. It was finally carried off by Olver Lovel, who, it was averred, crept in between the scrambling legs and fetched it away in a moment when the object of the race was forgotten, and only the fun of the scrimmage remembered. No one quite knew in what spirit to take Olver’s success. It was too unpopular for congratulations to ring genuine, so most of the party turned aside and pretended to be busy with other things, sooner than betray their disappointment,--for they were kindly folk,--and to spare themselves the necessity of smiling to Olver. In fact, it was felt that a slight chill had been cast over the afternoon by the simpleton getting the better of the cheese. As for Olver he was quite happy with his cheese, which was large and round, and beside which he sat at a little distance on the grass, occasionally patting it and stroking its smooth cool rotundity. Clare let her interest stray from the platform, in order to observe him; like most of the others he had put a wreath of sorrel and grasses round his hat, but whereas the others acquired thereby merely a merry-making, country appearance, Olver was made to look crazy and erratic, and twice as simple as usual. He sat now on the grass making a daisy-chain to go round the belly of his cheese; his legs were stretched out childishly straight in front of him, and his shovel hat with the waving wreath was bent down over his occupation. Simple, thought Clare; but how quick and cunning were his fingers! that was no unmixed simplicity.