Fancy! Sitting over the fire talking! Oh, you men! Tea!
tea! Tea, Will! Fancy talking all the afternoon! Well!"
No one had noticed Hugh. He, however, had understood Mr. Pidgen better
than Mr. Lasher did.
V
This conversation aroused in Hugh, for various reasons, the greatest
possible excitement. He would have liked to have asked Mr. Pidgen many
questions. Christmas Day came, and a beautiful day enthroned it: a pale
blue sky, faint and clear, was a background to misty little clouds that
hovered, then fled and disappeared, and from these flakes of snow fell
now and then across the shining sunlight. Early in the winter afternoon
a moon like an orange feather sailed into the sky as the lower stretches
of blue changed into saffron and gold. Trees and hills and woods were
crystal-clear, and shone with an intensity of outline as though their
shapes had been cut by some giant knife against the background. Although
there was no wind the air was so expectant that the ringing of church
bells and the echo of voices came as though across still water. The
colour of the sunlight was caught in the cups and runnels of the stiff
frozen roads and a horse's hoofs echoed, sharp and ringing, over fields
and hedges.
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