Let that be as it may, I deserved a good beating that night, after
making such a fool of myself, and grinding good fustian to pieces. But
when I got home, all the supper was in, and the men sitting at the white
table, and mother and Annie and Lizzie near by, all eager, and offering
to begin (except, indeed, my mother, who was looking out at the
doorway), and by the fire was Betty Muxworthy, scolding, and cooking,
and tasting her work, all in a breath, as a man would say. I looked
through the door from the dark by the wood-stack, and was half of a mind
to stay out like a dog, for fear of the rating and reckoning; but the
way my dear mother was looking about and the browning of the sausages
got the better of me.

[Illustration: 072.jpg John Ridd at Supper]

But nobody could get out of me where I had been all the day and evening;
although they worried me never so much, and longed to shake me to
pieces, especially Betty Muxworthy, who never could learn to let well
alone. Not that they made me tell any lies, although it would have
served them right almost for intruding on other people's business; but
that I just held my tongue, and ate my supper rarely, and let them try
their taunts and jibes, and drove them almost wild after supper, by
smiling exceeding knowingly. And indeed I could have told them things,
as I hinted once or twice; and then poor Betty and our little Lizzie
were so mad with eagerness, that between them I went into the fire,
being thoroughly overcome with laughter and my own importance.

Now what the working of my mind was (if, indeed it worked at all, and
did not rather follow suit of body) it is not in my power to say; only
that the result of my adventure in the Doone Glen was to make me dream
a good deal of nights, which I had never done much before, and to drive