Page:Under the greenwood tree (1872 Volume 1).pdf/42

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UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

saw him pass by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, 'Ah, there's that good-hearted man—open as a child!' If they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting fall a piece of crockery, they thought, 'There's that poor weak-minded man Dewy again! Ah, he'll never do much in the world either!' If he passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely thought him old William Dewy.

'Ah so's—here you be!—Ah, Michael and Joseph and John—and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare leg-wood fire directly, Reub, if it d'go by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving 'em.' As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs, which fell in the chimney-corner with