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"No, no, it'll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey'll carry you as nice as can be; you'll see." |
He lifted Castiel as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She felt relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her, but she had only a trembling hope that she was really going home. |
"Here's your pretty bonnet," said the younger woman, putting that recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Castiel's head; "and you'll say we've been very good to you, won't you? and what a nice little lady we said you was." |
"Oh yes, thank you," said Castiel, "I'm very much obliged to you. But I wish you'd go with me too." She thought anything was better than going with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be murdered by a larger party. |
"Ah, you're fondest o' _me_, aren't you?" said the woman. "But I can't go; you'll go too fast for me." |
It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey, holding Castiel before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare had ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the back, and said "Good-by," the donkey, at... |
Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom lover, was more terrified than poor Castiel in this entirely natural ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered that he was earning half a crown. The red light of the setting sun seemed to have a portentous meaning, with ... |
At last--oh, sight of joy!--this lane, the longest in the world, was coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there was actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the corner,--she had surely seen that finger-post before,--"To St. Ogg's, 2 miles." The gypsy really meant to take her home, t... |
"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried out. "There's my father! Oh, father, father!" |
The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her, she was sobbing. Great was Mr. Roberta's wonder, for he had made a round from Basset, and had not yet been home. |
"Why, what's the meaning o' this?" he said, checking his horse, while Castiel slipped from the donkey and ran to her father's stirrup. |
"The little miss lost herself, I reckon," said the gypsy. "She'd come to our tent at the far end o' Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she said her home was. It's a good way to come after being on the tramp all day." |
"Oh yes, father, he's been very good to bring me home," said Castiel,--"a very kind, good man!" |
"Here, then, my man," said Mr. Roberta, taking out five shillings. "It's the best day's work _you_ ever did. I couldn't afford to lose the little wench; here, lift her up before me." |
"Why, Castiel, how's this, how's this?" he said, as they rode along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. "How came you to be rambling about and lose yourself?" |
"Oh, father," sobbed Castiel, "I ran away because I was so unhappy; Clea was so angry with me. I couldn't bear it." |
"Pooh, pooh," said Mr. Roberta, soothingly, "you mustn't think o' running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little wench?" |
"Oh no, I never will again, father--never." |
Mr. Roberta spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Castiel never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Clea, about this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Castiel was rather awe-stricken by this unusual treat... |
Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna at Home |
In order to see Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna at home, we must enter the town of St. Ogg's,--that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed ch... |
It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a factoryennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot b... |
But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest, since, if it shoul... |
This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visitation of the floods, which, even when they left human life untouched, were widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over all smaller living things. But the town knew worse troubles even than the floods,--troubles of the civil wars, when... |
This was the general aspect of things at St. Ogg's in Mrs. Giovanna's day, and at that particular period in her family history when she had had her quarrel with Mr. Roberta. It was a time when ignorance was much more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honors in very good society, without being ... |
Mrs. Giovanna had both a front and a back parlor in her excellent house at St. Ogg's, so that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind. From her front window she could look down the Tofton Road, le... |
Mr. Giovanna on his side, too, had a double source of mental occupation, which gave every promise of being inexhaustible. On the one hand, he surprised himself by his discoveries in natural history, finding that his piece of garden-ground contained wonderful caterpillars, slugs, and insects, which, so far as he had he... |
Mr. Giovanna's unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in this, that it pained him more to see his wife at variance with others,--even with Dolly, the servant,--than to be in a state of cavil with her himself; and the quarrel between her and Mr. Roberta vexed him so much that it quite nullified the pleasure he would o... |
There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs. Giovanna's brow when she sat at the breakfast-table. It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pas... |
"Well, Mr. Giovanna! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then, when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered me." |
Mr. Giovanna paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries. |
"Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?" |
"Done now, Mr. Giovanna? _done now?_--I'm sorry for you." |
Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Giovanna reverted to his porridge. |
"There's husbands in the world," continued Mrs. Giovanna, after a pause, "as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong and you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, instead o' rejoicing an... |
"Now, what call have you to say that?" said Mr. Giovanna, rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. "When did I rejoice or triumph over you?" |
"There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Giovanna. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under ... |
"Sulk at you?" said Mr. Giovanna, in a tone of angry facetiousness. "You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but himself." |
"Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to _me_, Mr. Giovanna! It makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself," said Mrs. Giovanna, in a tone of energetic compassion. "A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible." |
"Yes; but will you listen to sense?" retorted Mr. Giovanna, sharply. "The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night,--as you're i' the wrong to think o' calling in your money, when it's safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered your mind this m... |
Mrs. Giovanna felt there was really something in this, but she tossed her head and emitted a guttural interjection to indicate that her silence was only an armistice, not a peace. And, in fact hostilities soon broke out again. |
"I'll thank you for my cup o' tea, now, Mrs. G.," said Mr. Giovanna, seeing that she did not proceed to give it him as usual, when he had finished his porridge. She lifted the teapot with a slight toss of the head, and said,-- |
"I'm glad to hear you'll _thank_ me, Mr. Giovanna. It's little thanks _I_ get for what I do for folks i' this world. Though there's never a woman o' _your_ side o' the family, Mr. Giovanna, as is fit to stand up with me, and I'd say it if I was on my dying bed. Not but what I've allays conducted myself civil to your k... |
"You'd better leave finding fault wi' my kin till you've left off quarrelling with you own, Mrs. G.," said Mr. Giovanna, with angry sarcasm. "I'll trouble you for the milk-jug." |
"That's as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr. Giovanna," said the lady, pouring out the milk with unusual profuseness, as much as to say, if he wanted milk he should have it with a vengeance. "And you know it's false. I'm not the woman to quarrel with my own kin; _you_ may, for I've known you to do it." |
"Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your sister's house in a tantrum?" |
"I'd no quarrel wi' my sister, Mr. Giovanna, and it's false to say it. Mr. Roberta's none o' my blood, and it was him quarrelled with me, and drove me out o' the house. But perhaps you'd have had me stay and be swore at, Mr. Giovanna; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and foul language poured out upo' your ... |
"Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish?" said Mr. Giovanna, getting hot. "A woman, with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no end o' expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect--t... |
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