TICKNOR'S MEW
Some men there are whom it is a pleasure to observe at their daily work.
How they swing their shoulders, and sway their arms, and strain the
strong cordage of the bulky thigh, casting weight as well as muscle into
the fight they are waging! And this pleasure should be made the most of,
because it is growing very rare. I have heard my grandfather say, that
when he was a boy, one man could do, ay and would insist on doing, more
work in a day, than is now to be got out of three by looking hard at
them--three men of the very same stock and breed, perhaps even that
grandfather's own grandchildren. And the cause which he always assigned
for this, though not a bad scholar himself, and even capable of some
Latin, was the wild cram and pressure of pugnacious education. "The more
a jug gurgles, the less it pours," was his simple explanation.
There is much to be said on the other side, especially as the things put
into their heads are quick enough to go out again, and the Muses as yet
have not turned the village-boy into a Ganymede; but the only man, on
our little farm, who ever worked with might and main had never been at
school at all, and his name was Robert Slemmick. To this man nothing
came amiss, if only there was enough of it. He was not particularly
strong, nor large of frame, nor well put together; but rather of a
clumsy build and gait, walking always with a stoop, as if he were
driving a full wheel-barrow, and swinging both arms at full speed with
his legs. But set him at a job that seemed almost too heavy for him,
and he never would speak, nor even grunt, nor throw down his tool and
flap his arms, but tear away at it, without looking right or left, till
you saw with surprise that this middle-sized man had moved a bigger bulk
in the course of a day than a couple of hulking navvies.
But one fault he had, and a very sad fault, which had lost him many a
good place ere now, and would probably bring him to the workhouse--he
was what is called by those who understand such matters a "black
buster." At the nearest approach I could make to this subject, sidling
very carefully--for the British workman would be confidential rather to
a ghost than to his own employer--it seems that there are two kinds of
"busters." The white one, who only leaves work for a spree of a day or
two, meaning to jollify, and to come back in a chastened vein, after
treating all his friends, and then going upon trust; and the black, who
is of a stronger mind. This man knows better than to waste his cash upon
clinking glasses with a bubble at the top. He is a pattern for weeks and
months together, pours every shilling on a Saturday night into the hands
of his excellent wife--for it is his luck to have a good one--sits in a
corner with his quiet pipe at home, and smiles the smile of memory when
the little ones appeal to his wisdom. And so he goes on, without much
regret for adventure, or even for beer, beyond the half-pint to which
his wife coerces him.
Everybody says, "What a steady fellow Bob is! He is fit for a Guild, if
he would only go to Church." He ties the Canary creeper up, and he sees
to his cabbages, upon a Sunday morning. And the next-door lady shakes
her head over the four-feet palings, with her husband upstairs roaring
out for a fresher, after a tumble-down night of it. "Oh, if my Tom was
like your Mr. Robert!" But Mrs. Bob also shakes her head. "Oh, yes, he
is wonderful good _just now_."
Then comes the sudden break down, and breakaway. Without a word to any
one, or whisper to his family, off sets Mr. Robert, on a Monday morning
generally, after doing two good hours' work, before breakfast. Perhaps
he has been touched on the virtuous road home, by a fine smell of beer
at the corner, where the potboy was washing the pewters, and setting
them in the sun for an airing; perhaps it was a flower that set him off,
a scarlet Geranium, who can tell? Under some wild impulse he bolts and
makes away; he is in the next parish, before his poor wife has given up
keeping the tea-pot warm; and by the time she has knocked at the
tool-house door, in the forlorn hope that he may be ill, he is rousing
the dust of the adjoining county, still going straight ahead, as if the
Devil were after him. And that last authority alone can tell how Bob
lives, what he thinks of, where his legs and arms are, whence his beer
flows down to him, for a month, or even half-a-year, or nobody knows how
long it is.
This Robert Slemmick had been in our employment ever since last
Candlemas, and had only broken out once as yet, in the manner above
described. Excepting only that little flaw, his character was excellent,
and a more hard-working, obliging, intelligent man never came on any
premises. When I took him back after his escapade, I told him very
plainly that it would not be done again; and he promised to stick to his
work, and did so. But not a word to me, or anybody else, as to why he
went away, or whither, or what he had been doing, or how he got his
living. Knowing how peculiar the best men are--otherwise could they be
good at all?--I tried not to intrude upon the romance of his Beerhaven,
but showed myself rather cold to him, though I longed to know about it.
"Master Jarge," said this man one day, when he was treading a hayrick,
and I was in the waggon with the fork below; and it must according to
the times have been the very day after Jackson Stoneman came to me,
"Master Jarge, what would 'e give to know summut as I could tell 'e?"
He had had a little beer, as was needful for the hay; and I looked at
him very seriously; reminding him thus, without harshness, of my opinion
of his tendencies. But he did not see it in that light.
"You shape the rick," I said. "I don't want to hear nothing." For you
must use double negations if you wish them to understand you. We were
finishing a little rick of very choice short staple, with a lot of
clover in it, and _Old Joe_ in the shafts was likely to think of it many
a winter night. At such a juncture, it will not do to encourage even a
silent man.
Bob went cleverly round and round, dealing an armful here and there, for
a very small round rick is the hardest of all for scientific building,
and then he came back to the brink close to me, till I thought he was
going to slide down upon my knees.
"What would 'e give, Master Jarge," he whispered, making a tube of his
brown, bristly hand, "to hear all about the most bootifullest maiden as
ever come out of the heavens?"
Although I felt a tingle in my heart at this, I answered him very
firmly. "Get on with your work. Don't talk rubbish to me."
"You be the steadiest of the steady. Every fool knows that. But I
reckon, Master Jarge hath his turn to come, same as every young man the
Lord hath made with a pair of eyes. Oh! our Miss Grace, she be bootiful
enough. But this one over yonner--O Lord! O Lord!"
He waved his hand towards the valley in the distance, whose outline was
visible from where we stood. And dignified as I tried to be, he saw my
glance go wandering.
"Why, you knows all about it, Master Jarge! You be clapping your eyes
upon the very place! Why, ne'er a man in England hath ever seed the
like. And who could a'thought it, a'standing outside!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Why, you must have been dreaming. Who knows what
comes over you sometimes?"
This reference to his "busting" weakness was not in good taste, when the
crime had been forgiven, and the subject was known to be hateful to him.
But this was the sure way to let his tongue loose; and when a reserved
man once breaks forth, he is like a teetotaller going on the spree.
"I could show 'e the place now just, Master Jarge; the place can't run
away I reckon. All over ivy-leaves the same as a church-tower. You
can't deny of they, when you sees them, can 'e? And the bootiful young
gal--why, you've seed her, Master Jarge! By the twinkle of your eyes, I
could swear to it."
"Robert Slemmick, you are off your head;" I answered with a very
steadfast gaze at him, for his keen little eyes were ready to play "I
spy" with mine. "I insist upon knowing where you have been, and what you
have done, and what people you have met. If they knew that you were in
Sir Harold Cranleigh's service, you may have done us great discredit."
With some indignation he told his tale, and finished it before the other
men came back; for his tongue was as brisk as his arms and legs, which
had rare gifts of locomotion. But I must fill in what he left out, for
it would be neither just nor wise to expect him to inform against
himself.
It seems that he was walking very fast, discharging himself from
domestic bonds, and responsibility, and temperance, when he came to a
black door in a big wall; and rapid as he was, this brought him up. His
thoughts, if any, were always far in advance of him at such moments, and
perhaps his main object was to overtake them. This he could not explain,
and had never thought about it, but at any rate that door should not
stop him. It was locked, or bolted, and without a bell, but he worked
all his members together against it, as he alone of mankind could do,
and what could withstand such progressive power? The door flew open, and
in rushed Slemmick, like the London County Council.
But there are powers that pay no heed to the noblest psychical impulse.
Two dogs of extraordinary bulk and stature had him prostrate between
them in an instant, and stood over him, grinding enormous jaws. Dazed as
he was, cold terror kept his restless members quiet, and perhaps he
felt--though he did not so confess it--that conjugal law was vindicated.
"I were in too terrible a funk to think," was his statement of the
position.
But the two dogs appeared to enjoy the situation, and being of prime
sagacity were discussing his character between them. If he had been a
mere "white buster," that is to say a common tramp, they would have
stopped his tramp for ever. But they saw that he was a respectable man,
a sound home-liver in his proper state of mind; and although they would
not hear of his getting up, they deliberated what they ought to do with
him. Slemmick in the meanwhile was watching their great eyes, and their
tails flourished high with triumphant duty, and worst of all their
tremendous white fangs, quivering if he even dared to shudder.
"Abashed I were to the last degree," he told me, and I could well
believe it; "my last thought was to my poor wife Sally." A good partner,
to whom his first thoughts should have been. But while he was thus truly
penitent I hope, a clear sound as of a silver whistle came to his ears,
and the dogs stood up, and took the crush of their paws from his breast,
and one of them sat by him, in strict vigilance still, while the other
bounded off for instructions.
Then, according to Slemmick, there appeared to him the most beautiful
vision he had ever seen. "Straight from heaven. Don't tell me, Master
Jarge, for never will I hear a word agin it. Straight from heaven, with
the big hound a'jumping at her side, and him looking like an angel now.
If you was to see her, you'd just go mad, and never care to look at any
other maid no more."
"What was she like, Bob?" It had not been my intention to put any
question of this kind, but Slemmick was in such a state of excitement,
that I had a right to know the reason.
"Don't 'e ask me, sir; for good, don't 'e ask me. There never was no
words in any Dixunary, and if there was, I couldn't lay to them. There
then, you go and judge for yourself, Master Jarge."
"But she can't be there all by herself, my friend. Surely you must have
seen some one else. And what language did she speak in?"
"Blowed if I can tell 'e, sir. All I know is, 't were a mixture of a
flute and a blackbird, and the play-'em-out-of-Church pipes of the
horgan. Not that she were singing, only to the ear, my meaning is; and
never mind the words no more than folk does in a hanthem. Lor, to hear
poor Sally's voice, after coming home from that--even in the wisest
frame of mind, with all the wages in her lap!"
"But you did not come home, Bob Slemmick, for I know not how long. Did
you spend the whole of your time in that enchanted valley?"
"Ah, a chant it were, by gum! A chant as I could listen to--why, Master
Jarge, I'll take 'e there; for two skips of a flea I would. Won't 'e?
Very well. Best not, I reckon. Never look at no English maids no more."
This was nearly all that I could get from Bob, without putting hundreds
of questions; for instead of straight answers, he went off into ravings
about this most ravishing young lady, who must have contrived to make
out what he wanted, for after having saved him from the dogs, she led
him directly to the lower door, and sped him on his way with
half-a-crown. But that, as he assured me, was of no account in his
estimate of her qualities. "You ask Farmer Ticknor, sir, if you think I
be a'lying. Farmer Ticknor hath seed her, more at his comfort than ever
I did; and Ticknor come hotter than I do. 'Hold your blessed jaw'--he
say, when I goeth to ask about her, knowing as he were
neighbourly--'What call for you, Bob Slemmick?' he saith, 'to come
running like a dog on end down here? I'll give you a charge of shot,' he
saith, 'if I catch you in the little lane again. 'T is the Royal Family,
and no mistake, that knoweth all about this here. And don't you make no
palaver of it, to come stealing of my mushrooms.' As if we hadn't better
as we kicks up every day!"
Now all this talk of Bob's, although it may have told upon my mind a
little, was not enough to set me running straight away from my home and
friends, at a very busy time of year, as Slemmick was so fond of doing.
But betwixt the green and yellow, as our people call the times of hay
and corn, it seemed to me that I might as well have a talk with that
Farmer Ticknor, who was known to be a man of great authority about the
weather and the crops, and had held land under us as long as he could
afford to do so. He was rather crusty now, as a man is apt to be when he
lives upon a crust for the benefit of foreigners, and receives his
exchange in coloured tallow. It was two or three years since I had seen
him now; for "Ticknor's Mew," as he called his place, was out of the
general course of traffic, and as lonely among the woods as a dead
fern-frond. I found him at home on a fine summer evening, and he put up
my horse, and received me very kindly, for he was not a bad sort of man,
though rough. And if any pleasure yet remained in Farmer's lane to
workhouse, this man made the most of it by looking at the sky, as if it
still could help him against the imbecility of the earth.
"Yes, I have been a fine hand at it," he said, after sending for a jug
of ale, and two bell-rummers; "there never was a cloud, but I know the
meaning of 'un, though without they long names they has now. Bessie, my
dear, fetch _Ticknor's marks_. Don't care much to do it now--nought to
lose or gain of it. Not much odds to this land of England now, what
weather God Almighty please to send. 'And when they shamed the Lord out
of caring to mind the harvest, the Government goeth for to hirritate Him
more, with a Hoffice to tell us what sort of hat to put upon our heads,
when us can't pay for none. But I'll bet my Sunday beaver against his
band of gold. What say to that, Mr. Cranleigh? I stuck 'un on the
barn-door every marnin' as long as there was anything to care for in the
whitfields. It covereth a whole year, don't it, Bessie? Cross stands for
wrong, and straight line for right."
_Ticknor's marks_, as he called his calendar, certainly seemed to hit
the mark more often than the men of science did. On a great blackboard
were pasted in parallel columns the "Daily forecasts" and Farmer
Ticknor's predictions entered at noon of each preceding day. His pretty
daughter Bessie, the editor, no doubt, of his oracles, displayed them
with no little pride.
"If you will be pleased to observe, Mr. Cranleigh"--Bessie had been at a
boarding-school--"my father's predictions are in manuscript of
course,"--and much better than he could write, thought I,--"while the
authorised forecasts are in type. Now the crosses on the manuscript are
not quite five per cent; while those upon the printing exceed
seventy-five. If there were any impartiality in politics, don't you
think, Mr. Cranleigh, they would give father the appointment? And he
would be glad to do it in these bad times, for less than half the money.
Though we must not blame the gentlemen who have to do it all through the
window."
"You never hear me boast," interrupted the farmer; "there never was that
gift in our family. But I'll go bail to give that Meatyard man, or
whatever they calls 'un, five pips out of ten--all this reckoning by
scents hath come after my time--and give 'un twelve hours longer with
his arrows and his dots; and then I'll name the day agin him, for the
best joint in his yard. But bless your heart and mine too, Master Jarge,
what odds for the weather now? Why, even the hay, they tell me now, is
to come in little blocks from foreign parts. Make a ton of it they say
they can by hyderaulic something come out not a morsel bigger than the
parish-Bible. Well, well! Well, well!"
Knowing that if he once began upon "Free Trade," there would be many
changes of weather before he stopped, I brought him back to the other
subject, and contrived to lead him as far as the margin of the wood,
where the clouds by which he made his divinations could be contemplated
more completely; but he told me a great deal about their meanings,
although he knew nothing of their names; all of which I forget, though I
tried to attend.
It was not for any knowledge of clouds, or weather, or politics, or even
harvest-prospects, that I was come to see this Prophet Ticknor in the
woods. My mother's favourite subject was the "Fulfilment of Prophecy;"
but what I cared for now, and thought myself bound to follow out, was
the vision (seen by others as well as myself) of a foreign young
maiden--if it must be so--unequalled by any of English birth. The
prevalence of loose commercial ideas, and the prostitution of Britannia
(so highly respected while she locked her own gate), had given me a turn
against things foreign, though none but my enemies could call me
narrow-minded. And here I was open to conviction, as usual, with a
strong prepossession against my country, or, at any rate, against her
girls, however lovely.
"I suppose you don't happen to know," I said to that excellent Ticknor,
while still among his clouds, "whether anybody lives in that old place,
where there seems to be such a lot of black stuff? What is it? Ivy it
looks like. And old walls behind it, or something very old. I think I
have heard of some old Monastery there; and it was part of our property
long and long ago. Oh, Farmer Ticknor, how everything does change!"
The farmer afforded me a glance of some suspicion. Narrow
trade-interests had got the better of him. "You be gone into the retail
line," he said. "To think of the Cranleighs coming down to that. But you
don't sell milk by the quart now, do 'e?"
Though I did not see how it could bear upon the subject, I assured him
that most of our milk went to London, under contract with a great man,
whose name I mentioned; and the rest we kept for making butter.
"Well, then, I does a good little stroke of business there. Though not
much profit out of that, of course. They takes in a gallon-can every
morning. And they asked the boy whether I didn't keep no goats."
"Goats! Why then they must be foreigners," I said. "No English people
care about goat's milk. At least, unless their doctor orders it."
"They ha'n't got no doctor, and don't want none. A rare strong lot
according to all I hear. Toorks I call them, and I put it on the bill,
'Toork Esquire, debtor to John Ticknor.' Having raised no objection, why
it stands they must be Toorks."
"But people can't live on milk alone, Mr. Ticknor. And they must have
some other name besides Turks. Even if they are Turks, which I scarcely
can believe."
"Well, you knows more about them than I do, sir. I never form an
opinion, so long as they pays me good English money. But they never has
no butcher's meat, nor no beer; and that proves that they bain't English
folk. If you want to know more about them, Mr. Cranleigh, the one as can
teach you is my dog _Grab_. _Grab_ feeleth great curiosity about them,
because of the big dogs inside the old wall. He hath drashed every other
dog in the parish; and it goeth very hard with him to have no chance to
drash they. Never mind, old boy, your time will come."
An atrocious bull-dog of the fiercest fighting type, who had followed
us from the farmhouse, was nuzzling into his master's grey whiskers. Now
I love nearly all dogs, and, as a rule, they are very good to me; but
that surly fellow, who is supposed to be the type of our national
character, does not appear to me, by any means, adorable. Very faithful
he may be, and consistent, and straightforward, and devoted to his duty.
But why should he hold it a part of his duty to kill every gentle and
accomplished dog he meets, unless the other dips his tail, the canine
ensign, to him? And of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this _Grab_
was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly
patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes
leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut
off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that
I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat
was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes.
"Wonnerful big hounds they furriners has, according to what my milk-boy
says," the farmer continued, with a plaintive air; "but they never lets
them free of the big wall hardly, to let _Grab_ see what they be made
of. But come back to house, and have a bit of supper with us, before you
go home, Mr. Cranleigh. 'T is a roughish ride even in summer-time."
"Thank you; not a bit to eat; but perhaps before I go, another glass of
your very fine home-brewed. But I see a tree down in the valley there,
that I should like to know more about. I'll follow you back to the house
in a few minutes. But how long did you say that those strangers have
been here? It seems such an odd thing that nobody appears to know
anything about them."
"Well, a goodish long while they must have been there now. And they
don't seem to make no secret of it. Bakes their own bread, if they have
any; never has any carriage-folk to see them, never comes out with a gun
to pot a hare; don't have no fishmonger, butcher, grocer, nor any boy to
call out 'papper' at the door. My boy Charlie is uncommon proud, because
he have got into their 'Good-morning.' They says it like Christians, so
far as he can judge, and naturally he sticketh up for them. You can ask
him, Master Jarge, if you think fit. Nothing clandestical about
Ticknor's Mew. But none of them Inspectors to pump into our milk, and
swear as we did it. That's why I keep you, _Grab_."
Farmer Ticknor made off with this little grumble, lifting his hat to me,
until I should return. For he did not look down upon the "Gentry of the
land," for being out at elbows. After thinking for a minute of all that
I had heard, which was not very much to dwell upon, I twirled my
riding-crop (which I had brought from habit, and been glad to have when
I watched _Grab's_ teeth), and set off with a light foot, to explore
that lonely valley.
I was now on the opposite side from that by which I had entered it to
the tune of the nightingale, and at first I could scarcely make out my
bearings. For though I had seen it afar with Tom Erricker, something
prevented me from letting him come near it. Tom was an excellent fellow
in his way; but of reverence and lofty regard for women no decent
Englishman could have much less. Decent I say, because if such
sentiments are cast by, and scoffed at--as fools think it clever to
do--the only thing left is indecency.
This valley was not like many places, that are tempting only at a
distance. The deeper I found myself in it, the more I was filled with
its gentleness and beauty. It has never been in my line at all to be
able to convey what comes across me,--when I see things that look as if
they called upon us to be grateful for the pleasure they contribute to
our minds. Certain people can do this, as some can make fine
after-dinner speeches, while others are more fitted to rejoice inside.
And if I were to fail in depicting a landscape, such as any Surrey man
may see by walking a few miles, how would you care to follow me into the
grandest scenery the Maker of the earth has made anywhere, unless it be
in His own temple of the heavens?
Enough that it was a very lovely valley, winding wherever it ought to
wind, and timbered just where it should be, with the music of a bright
brook to make it lively, and the distance of the hills to keep it
sheltered from the world. And towards the upper end where first the
stream came wimpling into it, that ancient wall, which had baffled me,
enclosed a large piece of land as well as some length of watercourse,
but gave no other token of its purpose. This was what I cared most
about; for stupid and unreasonable as it must appear, a sharp spur had
been clapped to my imagination by the vague talk of Slemmick and
Ticknor. And not only that, but to some extent, the zeal and the ardour
of Jackson Stoneman, and his downright policy, had set me thinking that
poor as I was, while he was rolling in money, the right of my manhood
was the same as his--to pursue by all honest means the one fair image
which a gracious power had disclosed to me. Therefore, after looking at
the tree to soothe my conscience, I followed the course of that
wandering wall, by no means in a sneaking manner, but showing myself
fairly in the open meadows, and walking as one who takes exercise for
health.
The wall was on my left hand, all the way from the track (in which the
steep road ended after crossing the brook) and although I would rather
sink into a bog than seek to be spying impertinently, nothing could have
come upon that wall, and no one could have peeped over it without my
taking it in at a side-flick. But I only had sense of one thing moving
throughout all my circuit, and that was but little to comfort me. Just
as I was slipping by the upper door (which Slemmick had burst open), and
taking long strides--for if some one had opened it and asked what I
wanted there, how could I, as a gentleman, tell the whole
truth?--suddenly there appeared within a square embrasure, and above the
parapet among the ivy, the most magnificent head I ever saw. Mighty
eyes, full of deep intelligence, regarded me, noble ears (such as no man
is blest with) quivered with dignified inquiry, while a majestic pair of
nostrils, as black as night, took sensitive quest of the wind, whether
any of the wickedness of man were in it.
Knowing that I only intended for the best, though doubtful if that would
stand me in much stead, supposing that this glorious dog took another
view of it, I addressed him from below with words of praise, which he
evidently put aside with some contempt. He was considering me
impartially and at leisure; and if I had moved he would have bounded
down upon me. Luckily I had the sense to stand stock-still, and afford
him every facility for study of my character. At the same time I looked
at him, not combatively, but as if I felt similar interest in him, which
I had excellent reason for doing. To my great relief his eyes assumed a
kind expression; by the pleasant waving of his ears I could tell that
his tail was wagging, and he showed a bright dimple beneath his black
whiskers, and smiled with the humour which is far beyond our ken.
Whereupon I nodded to him, and made off.
When I came to think of him, in that coarser frame of mind in which we
explain everything so meanly, it occurred to me that those noble
nostrils, curving like the shell of Amphitrite, were scarcely moved so
much perhaps by the influence of my goodness, as by the fragrance of my
sister's spaniel, _Lady Silky_, who had nestled in my hairy jacket,
while I was casting up accounts that day. However, be his motive large
or small, he had formed a friendly opinion of me, and when I disappeared
among the trees, a low whine followed me as if the place had grown more
lonely.
Upon the whole I had made some progress towards the solution of this
strange affair. Within those walls there must be living a settlement of
foreigners, an establishment of some size, to judge by the quantity of
milk they used. Some of them could speak English, but they did not seem
to associate with any of their neighbours, and probably procured from
London the main part of what they needed. To Farmer Ticknor, as to most
of the rustics round about us, all who were not of British birth were
either Turks or Frenchmen. To my mind these were neither; and the
possession of those noble dogs--a breed entirely new to me--showed that
they were not dwelling here to conceal their identity, or to retrench
from poverty. For there were at least two dogs, perhaps more, worth a
hundred guineas each to any London dealer at the lowest computation, and
not by any means qualified to live on scanty rations. Another point I
had ascertained--that the old Mill, out of use for many years, was now
at work again. This had been built, no one knows how long ago, among
the monastic ruins upon the never-failing Pebblebourne. And while I was
counting the moments for that gigantic dog to spring down on me, I heard
very clearly the plash of the wheel, and the boom and murmur of the
works inside.
As a last chance of picking up something more, when I was getting on my
horse, I said across his mane to the fair Bessie Ticknor, that
"highly-cultured" maiden,--"A little bird has told me, though I would
not listen to him, that a young lady almost as pretty as Miss Ticknor
lives in a valley not a hundred miles from here." Bessie raised her
jet-black eyes, and blushed, and simpered, and whispered, so that her
father could not hear it:--
"Oh, I 'd give anything to know! It is such a romantic mystery! Culture
does put such a cruel curb upon curiosity. But it does not take much to
surpass _me_, Mr. Cranleigh."
"We are not all quite blind in this world, Miss Ticknor; though some may
try to contradict their looking-glass."