I like the round-cropped bullet-head that you never see out of our own little island. I like the fresh healthy colour, that deepens, instead of fading, with age, and the burly thick-set form, square and substantial as a tower, deriving its solid proportions from a good English ancestry, “men of mould,” since the days of Robin Hood, and its vigour from good English beef and floods of nut-brown ale. These are the sort of men that kept the green wood in merry Nottinghamshire, and bore back the chivalry of Europe at Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers. These are the sort of men that would turn the tide of an invasion to-day, shoulder to shoulder in their dim grey ranks, handling the rifle as deftly as their fathers did the bow, yet impatient somewhat of long-bowls at five or six hundred yards, and longing withal to get to close quarters and try conclusions with the bayonet. When it comes to clash of steel, depend upon it “the weakest will go to the wall.”
Five foot ten in his stockings; fourteen stone, without an ounce of superfluous flesh upon his ribs; built in the mould of a Hercules, with a ruddy-brown complexion and dark crisp hair, short, close curling and grizzled about the temples, for our friend is nearer fifty than forty, Tom Turnbull, as he is called at every fair, market, and cattle-show in three counties, nods good-humouredly to Miss Lushington, and gives a backward scrape of his foot in deference to myself.
“Glass of strong ale, if you please, Miss,” says he, in cordial cheery tones, and holding it up to the light, tosses off the clear sparkling beverage, with a sigh of intense satisfaction. No wonder. Since a market dinner at one o’clock, Tom Turnbull has ridden the best part of thirty miles. He has nine more to go before he reaches Apple-tree Farm, where he has succeeded Mr. Naggett (what a contrast!), and he will be out to-morrow morning at daybreak, looking after the ploughs, and taking perhaps a vigorous spell between the stilts himself. There is a good animal, however, waiting for him at the door, submitting impatiently to the caresses of the admiring ostler, and having had her own suck of gruel, looking wistfully round for her master, who she knows is never very long having a suck of _his_.