"Fault-finders should be free of flaws," Thomasina would say with a prim
chin. She _had_ seen the farm-bailiff himself "the worse" for more than
his supper beer.
But there was one history which Thomasina was always loth to relate, and
it was that which both John Broom and the cowherd especially
preferred--the history of the Lob Lie-by-the-fire.
Thomasina had a feeling (which was shared by Annie the lass) that it was
better not to talk of "anything" peculiar to the house in which you were
living. One's neighbours' ghosts and bogles are another matter.
But to John Broom and the cowherd no subject was so interesting as that
of the Lubber-fiend. The cowherd sighed to think of the good old times
when a man might sleep on in spite of cocks, and the stables be cleaner,
and the beasts better tended than if he had been up with the lark. And
John Broom's curiosity was never quenched about the rough, hairy
Good-fellow who worked at night that others might be idle by day, and
who was sometimes caught at his hard earned nap, lying "like a great
hurgin bear," where the boy loved to lie himself, before the fire, on
this very hearth.
Why and where he had gone, Thomasina could not tell. She had heard that
he had originally come from some other household, where he had been
offended. But whether he had gone elsewhere when he forsook
Lingborough, or whether "such things had left the country" for good, she
did not pretend to say.
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