He was in the best of spirits, and broke now and again into snatches
of song, which he trolled out in a tenor voice of great richness and
flexibility. Tristram listened in admiration on the other side of
the partition. The songs were those of Tom d'Urfey and his
imitators, and dealt in a strain of easy sentimentality with
hay-rakes, milking-pails and all the apparatus of a country life
as etherealised by a cockney fancy; but the Captain sang with
such a gusto, such bravura, and such an appealing tremolo in the
pathetic passages, that you might have mistaken the splashing of
water in his basin, as he broke off to wash his face, for tears of
uncontrollable regret that he had not been born a "swain" (as he put
it). Suddenly, however, one of his roulades ceased with more
abruptness than usual and the enchanted Tristram waited in vain for
the ditty to be resumed. The fact was that Captain Salt had glanced
out of the window and seen at a stable door across the court a man
stooping with his back to the inn and washing down the legs of a dark
bay horse.
The Captain contemplated this group for a moment; then hastily
donning his coat and turning into the parlour looked out upon the
street.
Immediately under the signboard of the White Lamb, and before the
front-door, stood a couple of men who chatted as they passed a
tankard of beer to each other.
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