He reached out his daisy-chain to measure against the cheese; he was engrossed and took no notice of any one or of anything. She wondered whether Nicholas Lovel knew that Olver was up here; usually he kept his brother away from any gathering of the villagers, lest he annoy them in any way. She had already noticed that Nicholas was not of the party and smiled to imagine him as one of that hearty gang. She even wondered the more, so aloof did he keep himself from the rest of the village, that he allowed his brother to join with them. But she remembered then that he made laws for himself only, and did not expect others to keep them; he was too indifferent, rather than too tolerant, for that. Clare thought that she would wait to see the broadstick contest, which apparently was about to take place, and that she would then ride away, for she knew that as the afternoon advanced, and especially as the discreet twilight arrived to throw its veil over the passions aroused by the prowess of the games, the party would become less rowdy, less athletic, and more sentimental, more inclined to break up into couples and to dispose itself thus about the grass, where no cover existed, but where privacy was guaranteed by a tacit convention that all wore blinkers. Clare remembered then,--what Martha Sparrow, gossiping, had told her,--that Olver Lovel sometimes made himself very unpopular by creeping up noiselessly behind some pair just as they were circling round the most critical stages of their courtship, either to shout loudly in their ears or else to tickle the backs of their necks with a straw, so that it had even been discussed in the Waggon of Hay whether he should be ostracised from the festival of the scouring. The threat of ostracism, however, had not been carried out. They were all too much afraid of Olver and of the tricks he might play in revenge on them, worse than shouting in their ears, or tickling the backs of their necks, or even than putting caterpillars up girl’s legs, which he had been known to do; and in a less degree they were also afraid of his brother Nicholas, not to mention the old mother, whom none of them had ever seen, and for whose continued existence they had to take Nicholas’ word for granted. Perhaps this fear of the Lovels, and of the queer powers they were reputed to possess, weighed even more with the ignorant village folk than the rough, kindly pity they felt for Nicholas in the affliction put upon him.