O'NEILL
Devonshire Idyls,
w
DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
FOURTH EDITION.
DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
BY
H. C. O'NEILL
t ;
PART-AUTHOR OF " OUR NURSES AND THE WORK THEY HAVK TO DO,
" NEW LIFE, ITS GENESIS AND CULTURE," ETC.
" In order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to under-
stand the art and joy of humble life — this at present, of all arts and sciences,
being the one most needing study." — Modern Painters, vol. v.
ILonli0n :
GIBBINGS & COMPANY, Ltd.,
i8, Bury Street, W.C.
<Siet£r: henry s. eland.
PREFACE.
Impressionists of the new school, reading their own
melancholy into a humanity they look at with a half-
coutemptuous pity, would fain have us believe that
life is scarcely worth living on any terms — certainly
not, when money is short, and food means daily toil,
and the care of children interferes with preconceived
notions of love and pleasure.
In these days of hurry and competition, there is
no doubt that the " art and joy of humble life," as
Ruskin puts it, is in danger of being lost from among
us. Half a century ago, there were traces of such
an art existing in many a Devonshire home, where
dwelt simple country folk lapped in sweet content.
These tales relate some of the incidents of those
bygone times. They would have no merit if they
were not absolutely true, except in unessential details
of name and place.
vi PBEFACE.
Will any of my readers care enough about Mary
to go and look for her grave? Let me tell them
they will not find it, though I stood by it once. Nor
can the name of the Rev. Thomas be found in dio-
cesan records, nor Muttlebury in the county map.
Yet many things of which I tell still linger on in
the pleasant West country, and, if I chose, I could
show you the very school-house where Janey learned
to sew, and more than one little maid who knows
what " behaviour " means. When Devonshire lanes
and Devonshire lakes and Devonshire manners have
all been swept away from the land, it will, I fear,
be the worse for us, and not the better.
As for me, I am thankful to have known and
loved them all ; to have had a childhood bounded by
so fair an horizon ; and to have passed my most
active years amongst a people so gentle, so kindly,
and so true.
April, 1892.
CONTENTS.
PiOR
Maky's Mco . . 1
A Story of Something 17
Christopher Comer . . .... 31
The School and its Scholars ... .51
The Patchwork Quilt 78
The True I^ove of Baknahas Butier and Betty Kick O-J
DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
>f 3€J'
MARY'S MUG.
IT'S just, an old bit of dome — not china, fine and
thin ; and it's phiin blue and white. Maybe
it's not your ordinary blue and white. Maybe it's
a pattern you never saw before. Maybe it came
from the old Leeds pottery, that's shut up now more
than a hundred years ago, and so folks admire it
because 'tis rare of its sort. But that's not why it
stands on my chimney-piece ; and that's not why
I love it.
'Tis nothing but a quart mug. And I dare say
that the first good woman who bought it — or bartered
a score of new-laid eggs for it at Barnstaple Fair, in
the year seventeen hundred and something, — handed
it to her good man that night at supper full of
sweet Devonshire cider, and I doubt he ever looked
at the colour or the pattern of it, but just emptied
it at a draught, and said, " Fetch us another drop,
missus, will 'ee ? I'm proper thirsty, I be."
It wasn't full of cider when I first saw it, and
it isn't because it holds a measured quart that I
care for it.
2 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
It's fall of quite another draught for me, and it
holds what is more precious than the sweetest wine
that ever came from the vintage of Tokaj.
For it is full of memories. And when one grows
old, the sweetest thing in the world is to remember
the bright years that are past.
Time long ago, when the sun always shone warm
'n summer, and we donned our cotton frocks true to
the reason of May as the coming of the cuckoo, there
was a little cottage standing on the sloping side of
A goyle, down wliich ran a tiny lake. If you were
not born in Devonshire, as I was, you will have to
be told what a g'lifle is ; but you will feel quite
certain you know what a lake is, and will only
think that I have made a mistake in saying the lake
ran. " Lakes don't run," you know ; " they are pieces
of water surrounded by land, and they are quite
level and still, except when the wind blows over
them." Very true — in geography books for children
that is what lakes are. But not in Devonshire.
There the lakes are not smooth flat waters, but
running streams, leaping over the moss-grown
stones ; sprinkling the sweet ferns swaying on the
banks ; rippling round the spotted trouts ; tossing
defiant sparkles to the dishwasher, — and, oh deai', you
don't know what a dishwasher is any more than a
goyle ! How can I write in plain English, if I'm to
tell you what Mary's mug holds ? For Mary's mug
is just full of Devonshire pictures, and Devonshire
pictures can't be described in those common words
which we all understand — being what are taught in
the Board schools ; and I can't stop to explain every-
thing, or I shall never get on with my story. A
goyle is — just a goyle; and you must take my word
JiIAliY':S MUG. 3
for it, or else go down to Devonshire and see for
yourself. And a dishwasher is just a little bird with
a white breast and a short tail, and it makes the
pi-ettiest bob curtseys as it stands looking out for
its breakfast on the edge of that fairy -waterfall in
Liddicombe Lake ; and now you'll know it next
time you see it.
The cottage stood on the side of the goyle as
aforesaid, and old Mary lived in it. Years and years
before I saw it, and that "was long, long ago, Mary's
man built it to bring home his " missus " to. She
■was a proper Devonshire maid, straight and slim,
with bright black eyes, and very outspoken, as most
west-country maids be. And when her young man
had " walked " with her all a long summer through —
walked to and fro over the common to the sound of
the church bells on a Sunday afternoon, he with a
bit of lad's love in his button-hole, and she with her
" Common Prayer " folded in a clean cotton handker-
chief with a pink border to it, and a spray of flower-
ing thyme put in to mark the Psalms — she thought
it was about time to do something more than walk
to church together. And so, when Jan said to her,
" What be thinking of, Molly, then ? " she spoke up,
and answered, "Where be us gwine to live to, Jan Y
There ain't no cot that I know by hereabouts, and thee
mustn't set thyself down fur away from thy work."
" ]\Iother's a lone widow woman, Mary, and her 'ill
be glad enough I should bring thee home, where
there's chambers to spare and lack o' company."
" Nay, lad, nay. I don't hold with two livyers
lander one roof. Give me a place to ourselves, Jan,
and let 1 be missus in it."
And so, with the help of Molly's " feyther," Jan
built that little house. And its walls were srood
4 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
honest " cob " — none of your rubbishy bricks and
mortar, through which winds blow and rains leak,
but warm, thick cob walls, and a fine thatch of
straw atop.
Mary used often to tell me it was "a little old
scram place ; " but that was long after, when the
thatch was green with houseleek and yellow stone-
crop. When she first came there as bride, with a
" good man " of her own, and hung up her grand-
mother's mug on the dresser hook, she was proud
enough of the cot whicli her Jan had built for the
most part with his own hands ; and in it for more
than sixty years Mary " lay down missus and got
up master," as we say thereabouts.
John was a brave steady chap, and he lived out
his appointed span of life in the cob cottage with
the thatched roof. And he never knew but what
he was master in it. He was slow and steady ; but
she was flippant on her feet, and sharp to her tongue,
and ordei^ed all that came into the house, and moat
that went out of it.
The first thing that came was a little maid. And
Mary said, " Us 'ill call her Tamasina, after my granny
as give me the blue mug there." But Jan said,
" My mother's christened Lizbuth, though 'em do
call her Betsy for short. I reckon Lizbuth's a fine
name, Mary, and mother 'ud be pleased ? "
The missus held her tongue till the Sunday came,
when she and her gossips took the child to church.
And as she hitched up the big tea-kettle to the
chimney crook before they started, and raked up the
turf-ashes, she'said to her man —
" I tell 'ee what, Jan, us 'ill have a drop o' elder-
berry wine to-night, and a hot toast in it. Wilt
thee broach the little cask before us go away, Jan r
MAIiY'JS MUG. Fi
AnJ I'll dust out grandmother's mug, and us 'ill
drink the little maid's health out of it. Us couldn't
do no less, could ns, Jan, seeing — her's named to
grandmother ? "
And Jan scratched his head, and thought of the
nice hot toast and the deep draught of spicy wine,
and made answer, after a bit —
" No, us couldn't, I s'pose," and quite forgot how
he had once thought Lizbuth was a fine name. And
when the parson said, " Name this child," and
Mary's first cousin on her mother's side answered,
" Tamasina, please, sir," and dropped a neat little
curtsey as she spoke up, and the parson said in his
loud sonorous voice, "Tamasina, I baptize thee," —
then Jan looked round to the little maid's mother,
who sat in a pew behind, and saw her winking
away a bright tear as she thought on the grand-
mother who had been so good to her, and taught
her to spin and sew, and " learnt her behaviour;"
and as he looked at his wife and listened to the
parson, he forgot all about Lizbuth for the second
time, and thought Tamasina the finest name that
ever was. Is it not true that ''a man shall leave
his father and mother and cleave to his Avife " ?
And Jan and his missus and the gossips sat round
the hearth that evening, in the big settle ; and the
women-folk sipped their wine out of tumblers
genteelly, and stirred the sugar up with the little
old, thin, silver spoons that Tamasina the elder had
left behind when she said good-bye to this world.
But Jan drank deep draughts out of grandmother's
blue mug, not forgetting to say first —
" I wish 'ee all well ; and here's to the health of
the little maid who's named to grandmother.
Thank God for all His mercies ! "
6 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
For Jan was a goad lad and steady, and he also
had '' larnt beliavioar." But I think he enjoyed
himself all the more because his missus had her
way.
And when the gossips were gone away, through
the starlit night, across the moor to their own
homes, Mary said —
" Car' the cradle up to chamber, Jan, and I'll rake
up the turves, and latch the door, and hang up
grandmother's mug for fear he should get hurted."
And though she had three chores to do, and he
had only one, he hadn't got up over the chamber
stairs before she was after him. For Mary was
flippant on her feet in those days.
When I knew her first, she wasn't as young as
she used to be. Jan was dead, and the little maid
was " growed up," and had a man and a home of
her own miles away. And the five children who
came after her were all out in the world — some one
place, some another; but Mary still lived on in the
old cob house in the goyle which her man had
built ; and grandmother's mug still hung on the
dresser hook ; and Mary sat in the settle by the
turf fire, and knitted long grey stockings for the
farmers' wives, who had their own hands too full
of children, and chicken, and dairv work to have
much time to spare for sitting down quiet and
knitting. But Mary had plenty of time. Her man
was gone, and the children were gone, and her own
little bits of work — chores, as she called them —
didn't take her long, and were all done up early in
the day.
When Mary was tired of knitting, she got up off
the settle, and rolled up her stocking, and stuck
the pins in the ball, and put it away in that big
MAIiY'S MUG. 7
basket which always stood just under the table by
the door. And then she went out into the garden,
and saw the gooseberries were coming tine and big ;
and she reckoned she could pick enough to make it
worth her while to trudge into Ashcombe and sell
them. It was Saturday, too, that day, I think, and
next day was White Sunday, when most folks who
had a " man " and childi^en wanted to make a pie.
And though most folks in those parts had a garden,
— and, of course, a garden has goosebeiry bushes in
it — still everybody's garden did not lie to the south
like hers did. She had never failed of gooseberry
pie at Whitsuntide as long as her man had lived,
for her berries were always ready a week or ten
days before any one else's. That w'as one reason
why John built his house in a goyle, and a goyle
that ran east and west, and was "loo" from the
cold north winds, and lay out his garden sloping to
the southern sun.
But poor John was gone, and so was gooseberry
pie in that cottage. For when the parish allows
you one shilling and sixpence per week, 'tis all you
can do to buy a loaf of bread, and a bit of tea, and
now and then a quarter of butter.
One and sixpence won't buy everything. But
Mary never wanted anything — "not she, thank
God ! " as she would say many a time. Folks who
have gooseberries in their garden splats can sell
them when they can't afford to make pies, especially
if they are beforehand with their neighboui-s. And
when gooseberries are no longer green, curi'ants,
you may be sure, are waxing red and black iu the
summer sun.
This particular Saturday it was gooseberries Mary
went into her garden to pick, and as she picked she
8 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
measured them into grandmother's blue mug, — one,
two, three quarts good measure, and then Mary
stayed her hand. " Never pick a bush clean out,"
she used to say ; " a body never knows what they
'ill want to-morrow." And then the basket was
covered with a fresh rhubarb leaf; and the Sunday
cap, so neatly plaited, was donned. The little old
black silk bonnet was put on over the full white
borders that framed the withered cheeks ; the clean
blue-checked apron tied on ; the black " turnover "
pinned across vitty ; the turves raked together, so
that she might find fire on her return ; and then,
hiding her door-key in the thatchen eves, the old
lady started on her three-mile walk. She was still
flippant on her feet, though " her 'ill never see
eighty again for all her's so spry," as Mrs. Crocombe
said to me that day, when we watched the dapper
little figure coming down over " the Lawns," knit-
ting as she walked.
" But what us 'ill do for our arrants when the
Lord pleases to take her, I don't know, not I. Run
out, my dear, and stop her, do — though, there !
her's sure to come in."
And I, nothing loth, did her bidding, while the
farmer's wife hastily broke some bread into a basin,
and with a huge iron ladle dipped a few savoury
broth out of the big pot hanging to the chimney
crook, and set it on the end of the long oaken table.
" Sit thee down, Mary ; sit thee down. You'm
off early to-day. I wasn't looking for thee so soon,
and I've two or three arrants for 'ee this morning.
Have 'ee room in that there basket for my eggs, or
must I pack 'em separate ? Eggs is getting plenty
now. I s'pose I must let 'em go a shilling a score."
For the old woman would take anybody's eggs up
MAIiY'S MUG. 9
to Ashcombe, and change them at the village shop
into tea or sugar, or anything else that was wanted
for the week's consumption. But to-day there was
more than tea or sugar required, and, while Mary
was eating her broth, Mrs. Crocombe reckoned out
her pence and two or three sixpenny bits that must
be paid over and above the eggs for reels of cotton,
and ounces of cloves, and a quarter of blue, and a
pot of best blacking, so that Farmer Crocombe's
boots might not disgrace his missus as he walked
up the church path next day, conscious of his posi-
tion as parson's churchwarden.
Mary's basket was big, as I have said, and there
"was plenty of room in it for the eggs ; and against
she had finished her broth, all the items were
packed away in her head, and she rose to go, with
" Thank the Lord, and you, too, kindly, missus ; "
the stocking was unrolled and the needles began to
click ; and — " Thee shall have a cake to car' home
with thee, Mary ; my baking will be out by then,"
called Mrs. Crocombe after her, as she picked her
way over the stepping-stones by the back door.
The basket was pretty full against she got to
Ashcombe, but it was fuller still when she came
back. The stocking had to be put by in her large
pocket ; for though you " can knitty a bit " when
one ann only is loaded with a basket, you can't
knitty at all if you are carrying a big bundle in
your other hand as well. In that bundle was the
loaf which the parish sixpence had been changed
into, besides the little screw of tea and sugar, and
the bit of cheese, and a happorth of salt, and two
candles, which had all been got out of the remain-
ing shilling.
That was Mary's week'.s shopping for herself, and
10 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
in the basket were all the "arrants " she had been
intrusted with bj the farmers' wives, whose houses
she passed on the road. And when they took out
their little parcels, there was always something put
back instead. An odd duck's e^g, which wasn't
worth selling — a bit of cold bacon, left over from
the men's dinner, — or, as good Mrs. Crocombe pro-
mised, a figgy cake hot from the oven.
Not much, perhaps, in return for a long walk and
a heavy basket ! But what did .she want more ?
She never went to bed hungry, and she never lay
cold — the parson's wife saw to that; and blankets
don't wear out very fast when there's only one
little old woman to sleep under them, and they get
a careful wash once a year in the long summer days,
and keep for the rest of the year the scent of the
sweet yellow furze bushes they were dried upon in
the hot sunshine.
She never Avanted for anything while she was
alive. " What can a body want more than a full
belly, and a warm back, and a good thatchen roof
over their heads ? " she was wont to say.
But one day she told me a secret.
I was sitting in the old window-place, plucking
wheatears to be roasted for supper, when she came
by. I wonder, do you know how many wheatears
it takes to make a dish for a farmhouse supper H
Anyhow, Mary was quite right when she said,
" Dear sakes, Miss Annie, that's an everlasting
chore you'm at ; do 'ee let me help 'ee a bit." And
while we sat together in the afternoon sunshine, a
big semmet between us to put the feathers in, and
the light, glinting on the pi'etty little birds as they
lay in a heap on the sill, sliowed up their dark-
pencilled eyebrows, and accentuated the pathos of
MAIiY'S MUG. 11
their closed eyes and ruffled wings, she begnn to
talk out of the fulness of a heart that was generally
held still and shut up.
" I'm getting an old woman now, my dear. I
sem I shan't be able to go arrants much longer ;
and the Lord, He'll preserv^e me from being a bed-
Iyer, that He will. I alius was a spry maid and
flippant to my feet, and when I can't go no longer
I'll lie down and die. I've got all ready for the
burying, and, I pray the Lord, Jem won't let the
parish lay me in my grave alongside of my old man.
But there — Jem lives t'other side of Barnstaple, and
he mightn't come to hear of it in time ; and he's a
lot of children, he has ! But I've got all ready to
lay me out — 'twould only be the coffin and that to
pay for. There's a new shimmy Miss Ellen gave
me last Christmas, and there's a short bedgown as
belonged to your poor Aunt Bessie, what I had for
a keepsake ; and I've plaited up a clean cap, for
fear I .should be took sudden and not able to do it
at the last — and there's only one thing wanting.
And I'd wish to be a handsome lych, I would ; so
as not to scare them as come to look at me."
"And what's that one thing, then, Mary ? " I said ;
for if she liked to talk about her burying, why
should I hinder it ? " What is it you're wanting ? "
" It's the stockings, my dear. I haven't had a
pair of white cotton stockings since I was a maid,
and I can't abide the notion of lying in my coffin
in thiccy coarse black ones. If I only knew where
to put my hand on a pair of nice, white, boughten
ones, I'd die happy."
" Mary," I said solemnly, as I put down the last
trussed wheatear in the dish — and the tears stood in
my eyes as I thought of my dear old woman buried
12 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
by the parish, and with coarse black stockings en
those active little feet and neat ankles, — " Mary, I
promise you I'll o;et you a pair of white stockings
for the burying, if you die before me."
And Mary, as Ave drank a cup of tea together
after T had cleared away the feathers, said —
" Don't 'ee forget then, my dear ; for I'd wish to
be a handsome lych, and the Lord 'ill reward 'ee.
It's a heavy weight off my mind, it is ; for my old
man was always so much thought on."
But the old woman's time was not come yet.
The autumn passed away, and the winter, and
another summer came, and its garden stores
ripened. One day Mary came down to the farm
again, and with her came grandmother's blue mug
in her basket ; and the mug was full of big black
currants with the bloom fresh on them, and two or
three of the sweet-smelling leaves lay at tlie top.
" What have you got to sell to-day, Mary ? And
you're never going up to Ashcorabe town in all this
heat! — a Friday, too; why, all the folks are away
to market ! "
" No, my dear, no ; I'm past going to Ashcombe
any more. My poor old feet has pretty well run
their last, I reckon. And I've brought 'ee some-
thing in a present, if you 'ill please to accept of it."
And out of her basket came the mug, full of
currants. And, as she put it in my hand, the old
woman dropped the little curtsey which she had
learned from her grandmother was " behaviour "
when you " pi^offer some'at to a lady." Mary was
old and I was young, but " manners is manners " all
through life. And as I was going to turn out the
berries in a bowl, she held ray young fingers in her
old withered hand : " Keep en, my dear ; keep mug
31AliY'S MUG. 13
and all, for old Mary's sake. There's no one else
sets such a vallj on grandmother's mug as you do,
and I've allays ordained you should have en when
I was gone ; so you'd best take en now, for you
mightn't get en then. There's no knowing what
the parish might do, and Jem so far away."
* # * * *
How many years ago was that ? I hardly know.
I remember how we sat and told, and drank tea
together in the little old parlour, — ^Nfary and me
alone, for the " maister " and " missus " were gone
to market. And I put one of the black-currant
leaves in the teapot to give it a flavour — which it
did. And we talked of many things — of Jem, her
darling son ; of Humphrey ; and Ann, " who had
married such a daft body, and lived over to Welch-
land ! " of Tamasina's christening, and the best way
to make elderberry wine ; of ^Mary's good " place "
that she married from, and where she got the
magnificent wage of a "whole pound a quarter;"
of her wedding-gown, which lasted her for Sunday
best till Tamasina was " growed up a proper big
maid," and Humphrey could run alone, and the
cradle was empty — and kept empty, too, till it was
turned over to Ann, who married the daft body,
and lived to Welchland. The wedding-gown was
a white calico spotted with pink. I remember it
well ; for when it would not wear any longer as a
grown, the tail of it was cut up into three-cornered
neckerchiefs, and many a time I've noticed the spot
so like the shape of the wheatear's eye with its
darker line of brow. Mary's low-cut neck of her
black stuff gown showed a goodish bit of the ker-
chief underneath.
And so we sat and told in the gathering twilight
14 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
— told of the past with all its little homely details
and simple joys. But we never once mentioned the
burying tiiat must come by-and-by, or the parisli
coffin, or the white stockings. One doesn't need
to rake up the bottom of one's heart every day.
Soon after this I went away for a bit, and when
I came back it was winter weather, and, I re-
member, I caught cold driving twenty miles through
lanes blocked with snow, and over the bleak com-
mon. And one morning, when my cough, which
had kept me upstairs for a week or more, was
getting better, and I was thinking that I might
perhaps get out for a turn in the sunshine, a
messenger came to my bedside, and said —
" Please, miss, do 'ee know as old Mary, her's
terrible bad. And the doctor, he've sent her some
physic, he has, but her says her can't die easy
without you come to her. I'd have come and
fetched you before, but her wouldn't let me, 'cause
her knowed you was badly."
It wasn't long before I was climbing the old
stone stairs which led up to the chamber and to
Mary's bedside. There she lay breathing heavy
and short, but her eyes met mine fondly, and both
her withered hands were held out to me.
"God bless 'ee, my dear, I knowed you'd come!
No, you can't do nothing for me. You can't ^ive
me a new inside, and this one's wored right out.
I've worked hard in my time, I have. And the
childern's all put out in tlie world; and now I'm
going to my old man, and he'll be main glad to
see me. The things is all ready in the big chest.
And I'm all Avashed and clean ; folks won't have
much trouble to lay me vitty in my coffin. . . .
Is Jem come ? "
MAliY'S MUG. 15
But the afternoon wore away before Jem came.
The doctor came and went. The parson looked in,
and said a prayer by the dying-bed. The neigh-
bours had kindly words and oifers of help for the
night-watchers. But ]\[ary spoke to none. She
lay there, propped up on the clean pillows, her head
on my shoulder, her hand in mine.
When Jem came at last, she opened her eyes
once more. "I'm quite ready," she said, so softly
we could scarce hear the words. "I'm ready, and
the things are in the big chest."
Bj'-and-by 1 laid her down gently on the bed,
and closed the black eyes, once so bright, which
saw nothing now — not even Jem, her " eldest lad,"
as he knelt, a man of well-nigh sixty, by her side,
and cried his heart out.
And old Mary had her one wish gratified in her
death, which had been left unfulfilled till then.
She made a handsome lych. The white cotton
stockings did not fail her ; and the familiar old
face, with all its lines smoothed out by the tender
hand of Death, lay softly smiling, out of the net
borders she herself had plaited, at all the old friends
who came to show their last respect to one who
had lived out a long life among them — a long life
and a hai'd one, but never a discontented or an
abject one. With no luxuries and but few comforts,
slie lived out an honest life, and died as became a
woman who respected herself.
No complaints, no groans ; everything ready, and
her old man waiting for her ; her children put out
in the world, her good-byes said, her keep-sakes
given, she, like the patriai^chs of old, " drew up her
feet in bed and fell on sleep " !
She did not have a parish coffin or a parish burial.
16 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
The snow melted away and left tlie roads clear,
and thei'e were snowdrops and aconites enough to
sprinkle on the gi'ave. And when I look into the
old blue mug, and see all the memories it is full of,
I find, at the bottom of all, the bright sunshine, and
the scent of the moorland, and the ringing voices
of the childi'en's hymns which attended her to her
grave by John's side.
And Mrs. Crocombe said to me as we turned to
go home that afternoon, " Her was a dear old
critter, that her was, and us 'ill find her wanting ! "
A STORY OF SOMETHING.
WHEN I was a little maid at home, early in the
" forties," something happened. What it was
I did not know then, and I am hai-dly likely to be
able to find out now, since so many years have
passed away. Science has made great strides in
those fifty years, but I doubt if its steps have yet
covered the debatable land that lies between the
seen and the unseen, the material and the spiritual.
As for me, I am not scientific. Born in a corner
of England still haunted by pixies, and with Irish
blood running in my veins, is it likely ? Nay,
would it be possible ?
We are fond of describing ourselves nowadays
as the "creatures of circumstance," and a great
deal is also talked about "heredity" and "environ-
ment.'^ In my case, both these forces mixed my
blood and coloured my senses with a tinge of what
you might perhaps call superstitio7i. You are quite
at liberty to call it so, though I am not at all sure
that is the right name for it.
Anyhow, that the world in which I lived was full
of presences incorporeal, and thei^efore impalpable
and mostly invisible, was a creed certainly not
taught me by my mother, who was an English-
woman, and yet I believed in it as firmly as that I
had two eyes in my head — which also I never had
18 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
seen and never could see. I rather think this was
the belief of my forefathers, Avho lived on friendly
and familiar terms with St. Patrick and other saints
in the green island of Erin. And though they were
sadly wanting in that regard for their descendants
which induces sensible English folks to lay up for
their children the sort of goods which rust and
moth can corrupt, they stored up and passed on a
kind of spii'itual protoplasm — a wealth which
thieves cannot steal, even were they desirous to do
so, — and of this, I, my father's youngest child,
inherited a Benjamin's portion.
Moreover, I was born in Devonshire. And when
I was old enough to sit up to table and eat an e^g
" like a lady," my nurse taught me to make a hole
in the bottom of the shell when I had finished, so
that the fairies mightn't use it as a boat to sail
away in. The custom was a good one, and I keep
to it still.
It was when I was a year or two older that
" something " happened.
" Go up to Church town, Ellen, and take the
little maid with you," said my mother. " I want
you to call at the post-office and see if there's a
letter for your master." For in those days we had
no penny post ; and people who, like ourselves,
lived a mile or more away from Churchtown, —
where postman aliohted from his old horse, after a
ride of twenty miles, with two leathern bags slung
across the saddle, — had to fetch their lettei'S when
they expected any. And on this particular day, I
remember, we carried ninepence-halfpenny to pay
for it, and we brought the money back intact be-
cause the letter was franked.
But it was a long while before we got home
A STORY OF SOMETHING. 19
again, and my mother was beginning to be very
anxious about me, and the tea was waiting.
It wasn't such a very long walk, and we could
have done it quite well in an hour and a half if
only Ellen would have taken the road through the
wood, and gone up " Farmer Ward's Hill," as we
generally did. But no, as we turned out of our
own gate, she took the road to the left.
" That's the wrong way, Ellen," said I.
"Nofy," said she; "it's the right way for we.
I dursn't go over Farmer Ward's Hill when it's
getting dark like — and on a Friday, too ! No, not
for ever so."
"But why, Ellen ? " persisted I. " We've often
gone that way before."
" Yes, my dear, yes ; us have a-bin, but it ain't
safe now. There's Avice Lord — her that lives to
Farmer Dallin's — she were coming home last
Friday, just in the dimpses, and her's not been the
same maid since." And Ellen shook her head and
groaned.
Never been the same maid since ! What an
awful thought ! Suppose we should find ourselves
in like case, and when we got home mother should
not know us because we were other folks, and not
our own selves ! I had no more wish to go thi'ough
the wood and over Farmer Ward's Hill that even-
ing. But the other road was a long way round,
and we must walk fast ; and I, afraid of I knew
not what, clung tight to my nurse's hand, and asked
no more questions.
Still, we were well overtaken by the dimpses
before we got home. And the last thought in ray
mind as I settled myself down to sleep that night
was, " What could have happened to Avice Lord
20 DEVONSHIltE IDYLS.
that she was never the same maid again aftei* she
was caught in the dimpses on Farmer Ward s
Hill ? "
The next morning I was helping Ellen to make
the beds — for my mother thought it was good for
our lungs to shake and lift the blankets and pillows,
and we sisters always took turns in helping the
servants, — and the sun was shining brightly out-
side, and the birds singing. Encouraged by this, I
ventured to ask once more, " Do tell me, nursey
dear, what happened to Avice Lord, then, on Friday
last in the dimpses ? Do tell me, please ! "
But Ellen was loth ; missis had often bid her not
fill my little head with " nonsense." And then,
too, she was frightened herself, and did not know
rightly what to make of it. So I did not get much
more out of her than : " Her angered the old
woman, I s'pose, and so her drawed a ring round
the maid with her broomstick, all in the mux of
the road, and dared her to get out of it."
Here and there, — in the cottages round about,
now and then, when I carried little presents to the
mothers of new babies, or a bit of our own dinner
to a bed-Iyer, — I used to hear odds and ends of talk
about Avice Lord, and how "her'd never been the
same maid," and how not a thing would stay in its
place, or a cat bide in any house that she entered.
But every one knew that the lady down to Cross-
combe Cottage was veiy particular, if she was kind ;
and they thought on the puddings, and the cans of
broth, and the nice little frocks and skirts ; and if
I asked pointed questions about Avice, I only got
evasive replies. And as the girl left that part,
and took service somewhere up country, the story
gradually died out of my mind.
A STORY OF SOMKrillNG. 21
But some years after, when I was " grown up," I
was detained at a friend's house, where I had been
spending the day, till it was too late to walk home
five miles alone, and Tom AVheedon was sent against
me with a horse. I remember how glad I was to
see him and the old white mare. The moonlight
shone on them as they crossed the high rocks, and
struck into the shadowed bridle-path up which I
was climbing.
There was nothing to be afraid of, fori was never
afraid of being alone ; but, somehow, company was
pleasant among those wild rocks and dark cliffs,
where Sir Roberts' hounds were often heard giving
tongue and rousing the echoes — though both he and
his dogs were dead and buried a good hundred and
fifty years since. But they could not rest in their
graves, as the old tales ran, because of the sins he
died unrepentant of. There was no mystery about
these sins ; they were talked of openly. Perhaps
you will laugh when I name them ; but no one
laughed, in our parts, when we said, one to another,
that " old Sir Roberts could not lie easy, and no
wonder^ — for he fed his dogs on white bread, and cut
his nails on a Sunday." J do not laugh even now.
I think we should all be better Christians if we
minded what we were taught when we were little —
that the children's bread is not for brute beasts ;
and that, if we give to these, we defraud those for
whom it was ordained. Moreover, with regard to
his other crime, we are all aware that no good ever
comes from putting off till to-morrow what ought to
be done to-day. There are different opinions as to
the best day for cutting one's nails, and every one
has a right to his own opinion ; but never have I
heard any one so heterodox as to advance the view
22 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
that Sunday was the right day. Sir Roberts must
have chosen it in wilful insult to the Christian feel-
ing of his neighbours, or in besotted ignorance of
the difference between right and wrong. No one
doubted the justice of his punishment. The rest due
to weary bodies after a lifetime of right- doing, or at
least right-striving, could not be for such as he.
Still, the thought of him, as he wandered restlessly
round, was far from cheerful, and Thomas and the
old mare were welcome. And as one eerie thought
led to another, I recalled the maid who lost her
identity, and suddenly questioned —
" You never lived hereabouts, when that queer
story was told of the girl up to Farmer Dallin's, did
you, Tom ? "
"Well, yes, miss, I did," he allowed, though a bit
slowly and unwillingly, I thought. " My mother,
her used to work for the old Farmer Dallin afore I
was born ; and though I was most times to Combe, I
hired myself out to the young farmer for a year, just
for old acquaintance like."
" And did you ever hear the rights of that story,
Tom ? It was a very queer story, wasn't it ? "
" Well, yes, miss, it were a queer sort of a con-
sarn ; but I couldn't say as I knowed the rights of
it, though I knowed all as a body could know about,
seeing I were there at the time, and Avice, her were
my own sister, for my mother took another man
after poor f eyther was drowned off Beacon Rock in
the herring- time."
" Avice your sister, Tom ! and you there when it
happened ! Oh, do tell me all about it."
Tom hummed and hesitated a bit. Evidently it
was a subject he didn't care to talk about ; but, after
all, he began —
A STORY OF SOMETHING. 23
"I wa'an't tell 'ee no lies then, miss, and I can't
say how it come about at all ; but I can't go far
wrong, I reckon, if I tell 'ee what I saw with my
own eyes, I s'pose, and heai"d with my own ears.
There's a many curious things in this world, there
be ; and this one's the curiousest I ever came across.
But if 'ee want to hear it, this is how it was." And
Tom cleared his throat, and, having made up his
mind to tell, set straight off to recount events per-
fectly well known to him and much pondered on,
and therefore without the least break in his narrative.
" My sister Avice, her was a peart maid, her was —
nothing couldn't ever get over she. Her'd scrub
down the house when her was no bigger than my
little George be now — he that tends the crows to
maister's ; you know un, Miss Annie, — the one with
the carroty poll. And her couldn't 'a bin more nor
fifteen year old when the missus begged of mother
to let her come girl at the farm, and she'd lam to
cook vitty, and dairy work and all that like. And
Avice, her were terrible spry. Her dapped round
like anything. There wasn't no maid in the neigh-
bourhood anywhere that had her gumption. It
wasn't more than a twelvemonth after she came to
old Missus Dallin's afore she made the butter and
the cheese and all that, what the missus had never
trusted to a girl before. I've heard her say often,
' Avice, thank the Lord, thee wasn't born stupid ; '
that's what the old missus said, her did. And the
maid was that peart, her'd up and answer, "'Tisn'ta
fool as 'ud suit at the Barton, is it, missus ? ' And
the eyes of her 'ud twinkle, and her 'ud fly round
double quick. Her was that spry all the chaps was
after her. But her wouldn't look at none of them.
Her was my own sister, was Avice, and I know
24 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
what I'm a-saying of. And Fridays hei-'d go into
Combe with the butter and the eg-gs and that like,
so stiddy, just as if her were an old woman, her
would. The missus would tell 'ee the same word
for word if her was living ; but her died, poor soul,
most directly after Avice left the farm; her couldn't
stand no racketing, and her never cheered up like
again after Parson Joe came that night But
there, I ain't got to Parson Joe yet. No fy — I were
a-telling of Avice, and how spry her was afore her
met with that there old woman on Farmer Ward's
Hill as drawed a ring round her." And Tom shook
his head very soberly.
"But what did she draw a ring round her for,
Tom ? Do tell me."
" Well, there 'tis, Miss Annie ; how can I tell 'ee
what I doan't know ? I wouldn't tell 'ee no lies —
not if I knowed it. I wasn't there to see. Only
Avice, her come home all of a tremble and quite
skeered like. And her said the old woman had
drawed a i-ing round her, and dared her to get out
of it. And Avice said it was because her wouldn't
buy a broom of she. And so her drawed the ring
in the road mux with thiccy broomstick. But the
old woman were Tammy Kale, Dicky Kale's grand-
mother ; and folks do say her can ovei^look a body,
and 'tain't safe to anger she. Avice were a spiritty
maid then, and her wouldn't be said by Dicky Kale's
grandmother, 'tweren't likely. And her wouldn't
have nothing to do with Dicky, no ways. He didn't
come of a good lot, and I don't blame her. But
Avice, her wouldn't stand no nonsense, and so her
just shut her eyes and turned herself round three
times, and then took and made a leap right out so
far as her could, and when her opened her eyes
A STORY OF SOMETHING. 25
Granny Kale -were a-goo, and her besom and all.
But 'twas got quite dark all of a minute, and 'twere
only in the dimpses when the maid shut her eyes.
Her couldn't see nothing and so her rinned, and her
rinned, and her wasn't long on the road that night.
Missus, her was terrible frightened to see how the
maid looked. But that wasn't the worst of it.
Avice that was such a handy maid and never tored
up nothing, when her went to take up the broth for
supper down went the bowl to gi'ound ; and when
her picked up the sherds and went to dresser to reach
down another, her knocked the pint mug right off
his nail — but he wasn't dome, and so he didn't tear
up. So it was all that evening, and the next day,
and the next ; an(^ right on through the week the
maid wasn't herself, and whichever way her turned,
and whatever way her looked, something took the
clomen ware, and it all rattled and shook, and so
often as not something or other would jump right off
the shelf, or the table, or wherever it might be. And
the maid looked badly, her wasn't her old spiritty
self at all — her that were the spryest maid in the
country round. But us were all fond of the maid,
and us didn't take no notice. But I reckoned that
when White Sunday came I'd clean myself up a bit,
and go over to MoUand, and see the old Winifred —
her that's called the wise woman — there's many folks
goes to her, and her's got a powerful lot of charms.
Her spoke feyther's warts away. I've heard poor
mother tell of it many's the time. But Holland's
pretty nigh on seventeen mile away, and I couldn't
get for to go till the days were a bit longer and
yeaning-time were over. And one day the old
maister and missus was gone into Ashcombe with
the cart and horse; and I was out and about on the
26 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
land, looking after the ewes and that ; and Avice were
in the house. And then I see it was getting on for
six o'clock, for the bullocks was lifting their heads,
and the cows was moving on over the ' Little Park '
towards the geiit. So I follows 'em to the yard
"where the sliippon was, and ties up the bullocks, and
goes on up over the yard to call the maid to come
milking. And as I go along up over the stoiins,
what should I see but the milking bucket dapping
down over the court ; so I picked en up, and says,
' Well met,' says I, ' I were just a-coming to fetch
ee ; ' and I took en down to the yard, and stood en
beside of Blackberry, 'cause her were the first cow
I alius milked. And then I went for the stool, and
to fetch the maid. And as I went up over the
stoans this time, there was the semmet coming along,
and close behind he were maistei"'s old lanthorn,
dapping along like as if they were dancing. Well,
I didn't know what to make of it, but I picks 'em
up and carries 'em up the step into the big kitchen,
and I hung 'em up on the nails where they belonged
to.
" The maid were there, hitching up the chimney
crock, and her turned round to see what I were a-
doin' of, and when her faced the semmet he gave
one great jump and there he was, in the middle of
the floor, dapping about like mad. And the lan-
thorn, he wouldn't bide neither ; he was off again.
And the bellows banged agin' the wall. And the big
dish kettle what Avice had just hitched up tipped
over into the turves. And the maid, her stood there
quite skeered like, and her didn't say nothing.
' Avice,' says I, ' Avice, maid, what's up, then 't '
For I heai'd a great racketing up in the chamber
overhead, where the maister's old mother lay — her
A STORY OF SOMETHING. '^7
that was a bed-Iyer, for her were more than ninety
years old. And I said, ' What's up wi' old granny,
then ? and what be 'em after, tumbling the things
about like that ? * But her made answer quite
serious, ' There's nobody up there, Tom, and thee'd
better ways go on to milking.' And her looked that
strange there was no telling. But I couldn't go on
milking and not know what was up, and maister
and missus away to Ashcombe.
" So I went to the chamber stairs, and just as I
were a-taking off my mucky shoes, not to make no
dirt on the planches, what should I hear but some-
body coming down over the steps quite careful like,
JQSt as the little uns do! And there was old
granny's armchair, that alius stood by her bedside,
with the patched cushions in it, dapping down over
the steps one leg at a time ; and he come on quite
stiddy like, and, when he got down into the kitchen,
he give a great jump like, and got to where the
semraet and the old lanthorn was already. And
he set to, and they set to — and wherever the maid
looked there was a jump ; and the big bellows was
amongst 'em, and the dome rattled, and all the
things in the kitchen danced just as if it were
shearing-time in the big barn. But 'twas grand-
mother's chair that finished me. When I see en
a-dapping down over the chamber stairs, foot and
foot like a Christian, I was that terrified I runned
to the stables, and I jumped on to the back of the
old mare, and I rode for life's sake out against
maister and missus, for I knowed they'd be on
their way home by then. And, sure enough, I met
'em in the Danes. And maister, he saith, says he,
Tom, you drive missus home, and I'll take the old
amer and go after Parson Joe. Us can't stand this
28 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
no longer. Maybe he'll come and say some
words.' "
And Tom stopped to draw breath, for he had gonw
on talking very rapid. The moon was hid under
the clouds ; and T think we both felt the night was
rather dismal, and there was no knowing what might
be about.
" And did Parson Joe come then ? "
" Well, miss, yes — he corned ; but not then. He
said he must study a bit first ; and he'd got what
they calls a ' black book,' and he read up some
' words ' in it. But, there, I won't tell 'ee what I
don't know, miss. There were a many lies told up ;
and Avice, her never were the same maid again.
And the old granny, she never spoke like no more ;
her that was a bed-Iyer so long. And missus, her
died soon after Avice went away foreign. The
parson, he brought his book with un when he came ;
1 seed that with my own eyes, for he carried it his-
self, and I held his horse the whiles he went up
over the stairs into the chamber. And the church-
warden, he corned likewise ; and the waywarden he
brought two stoans out of the road on Farmer
Ward's Hill. There was a deal said and done.
And they telled I that parson got a bit of the rope
they hanged Tony Parkins the sheep-stealer with,
when parson's grandfather was living to Danstej-.
But I never seed that, and I won't tell 'ee nothing
but what I seed ; though the rope might 'a come in
handy to bind up the old witch's tongue with, if
so be as her did have a hand in all that terrifying
business. But what I knows, I knows for truth,
and that's what I tell 'ee. Miss Annie. And my
sister Avice, her wasn't never the same maid again.
And the old missus her died soon after Avice went
A STOIiY OF SOMETHING. 29
away; and though I didn't see no more but the
outside of Parson Joe's big book, I know there
must 'a bin something in en, for I heard a cruel
loud screech while I were standing there by the
upping-stock holding his horse. And Avice, her
went as white as a sheet."
" But how about the dome and things, Tom ?
Did they stop jumping about after that ? "
" Oh yes, miss. Parson Joe, he said them, and
they couldn't do nothing afterwards. But it was
grandmother's chair finished me. When I saw en
dapping down over the stairs just like a Christian,
I was up and off like a hare. I won't tell 'ee no
lies, but that I seed with my own eye?, ; and a body
could not stand that, could he, miss ? And Avice,
her never were the same maid again,"
*****
We got safe home that night, down Farmer
Ward's Hill and all ; and I don't know now why the
story of Avice made so strong an impression on my
mind. Tliei'e was nothing so very dreadful in it.
Mrs. Dallin died, it is true, in little more than a year
afterwards, but she always had been an ailing body,
and I've heard it was dropsy carried her off at
last.
The old granny, too — well, when one remembers
what her age was, ninety and over, and that she
had been a bed-Iyer several years, we cannot say
that she was taken away before her time ! And
though Avice was " never the same maid again,"
and " went away foreign," — which means up the
country to service, somewhere in the Midlands —
she got a good place, and a good husband, and I
believe she is living still.
There comes a turning-point in many a gii-l's life,
no DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
when she is never the same again. We walk about
in the midst of many mysteries, and yet, when we
are young, all the world seems to lie open to us and
the sunshine. Then comes something, we don't
quite know what. Something that, like the old
Tammy, draws a circle round us — an environment
that we can only free ourselves from with a great
eifort.
I don't know that I should be terrified now, in
my riper years, even if I were to meet old Tammy,
besom in hand. I've seen too many old women to
be afraid of them ; and a besom is not only harm-
less, but very useful, to my thinking.
But I know well — and, like Tom, I'll speak the
truth about it — that if I were to meet grandmother's
chair, or my own, for that matter, coming down over
the chamber stairs, step and step, like a Christian
and all by itself too, it would "finish me," and that
like Thomas, I should " run for my life " !
GEBI8T0PHEB COMER.
WHAT to do with our bojs and girls is a prob-
lem which English fathers and mothers ap-
pear to have a good deal of difficulty in solving now-
adays. Well-educated men and women clasp their
hands in despair, and, with a thousand or two per
annum at their backs, talk gravely of the expenses
of a growing family. I sometimes wonder how they
would have managed to make both ends meet, had
they stood in my fi'iend Christopher's shoes, who,
earning but fourteen shillings a week, had to feed,
clothe, and educate twelve sons and daughters on it!
A wage of fourteen shillings a week in Devonshire
implies that you have your health, and work hard too.
A labouring man, such as Christopher Comer, has no
floating cash at the bank to draw on when he has a
doctor's bill to pay and no week's wage coming in ;
though, if he is thrifty, he has saved a few pence
every week to meet the payment into a sick club.
I pride myself on being a good manager, but I
know I should find it hai'd to save those few pence.
For my part, I think Christopher one of the
cleverest men I know ; and last time I saw him, as
I shook his hard, honest hand, I told him I was
proud of his acquaintance.
31
32 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
"Christopher," said I, "yoa've brought up your
family to be a credit to you, and useful to society ;
and though your wife is gone fii^st, and you are left
alone in your old age, with only Dan to be a comfort
to you, still I'm sure you must be glad at heart to
know how well they've turned out ; and I feel it an
honour to know such a man ! " I had to speak loud,
for my friend is hard of hearing ; but though he is
turned of seventy, nothing else fails him.
A slow smile lighted up the honest face which
has turned such a brave front to the difficulties of
life, as he took in the nature of my compliments.
" Iss fy, they'm middling good children, all on 'em,
though some on 'em has done better than others ;
and me and their mother, us have tried to do our
duty by 'em, and teached 'em what us could. Us
couldn't give 'em no money, and not much school-
ing, but us did the best us could, and nobody can do
no more. Kitty, her worked hard for 'em all ; her
was a good mother, that her was."
Christopher Comer is a very old friend of mine.
Nowadays folks address him as Mr. Comer, I
observe. When I was a girl, and he was a young
chap, just wed, and come to live at " Little Comfort,"
every one knew him by the name of " Chris," and
his wife was plain " Kitty." I remember well the
first time I saw her. He was a native of the parish,
but " her didn't belong hereabouts," the farmer's
wife said, who, when she brought in our weekly
batter, excused herself for being a day late because
she was " so terrible put about to get through the
dairy work at all, Kitty Comer being that bad her
couldn't come up to do no chores."
" No, ma'am ; I reckon you don't know her," she
continued, in answer to my mother's inquiries ; " hei
CHRISTOFHER COMER. B3
isn't one of these pai-ts. Chris, our farm man, I
reckon you know he. His mother was poor ohl
Betty Comer, who died to Crock Meads, where the
landslip was seven years agone. And Chris, when
his mother was took and the cottage failed in like,
he went off to ]\Iol!and, and worked for Farmer
Tapp. And thei'e 'twas he took np with Kitty, who
was girl there. Catherine's her proper christened
name, I s'pose, but her never goes by no other than
Kitty. Some folks talk of Kit and Christy by way
of meaning the grey mare's the better hoi*se, but I
don't know anything against her, I don't, thongh
her doesn't belong hereabouts ; and us just calls
her Kitty, the master and me, us do ; and her's a
terrible handy young woman to have about the
place, for her can do most anything."
But poor Kitty Comei* was " took bad " more than
a week ago, and " couldn't do nothing; " and Mrs.
Turpit was sadly " put about," and we ran out of
butter in consequence, and had to make the best
of bread and dripping. For in those days there
was no running out to shop for a pound of butter
when you wanted it. Butcher's meat and butter
came on regular days, once a week, and you ordered
what you wanted for next Friday or Saturday, as
the case might be.
Kitty might not belong hereabouts, but she was
a person who soon made her presence felt ; and
though she was a new comer, we found her wanting
directly she was laid by, and it behoved us, not
only out of neighbourly^ kindness, but also with
regard to good housekeeping, to bestir ourselves,
and see what could be done to bring her to the
front again. " Took bad " might mean anything,
and my mother was never one to send remedies
D
B-1 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS
without knowing Avhat was the matter. So the
very next morning I was despatched to hear al(
about it, and report to my elders. I did not gd
empty handed, you may be sure ; for whatever it
was that had taken Kitty, a quarter of tea and «
little packet of groats would be sure to come in
useful. And, moreover, Kitty Avas a stranger, and
something must be done by way of introduction.
So my mother packed the little basket while I tied
on my sun-bonnet; and pleased enough was I to
have an errand that would take me out over the
hills that lovely morning.
Children that live in towns miss a great deal of
tlie pleasure of life, as well as the training which
comes from taking part in life's responsibilities.
And it cannot well be helped. Other things there
are which balance the disadvantages ; but a dis-
advantage it nevertheless remains, that childi-en
cannot be sent out for a walk alone, and that they
cannot be allowed to make friends while they are
still little ones with the people on whose labours
they depend in great measure for tlie comforts of
their own more luxurious homes. I was but " in
my thirteen," but though it was quite three miles
away to Little Comfort, where Chris and Kitty lived,
my mother had no fears in letting me walk there
alone ; and knew, moreover, that when I got there,
I should know almost as well as herself wdiat to
say and do. I was always welcome in the cottages
of the country folk — for, as Granny Richards used
to say to my mother, "Miss Annie, her's always
so homely like, but her isn't one with ' no hem to
her garment ' for all that." But that's neither here
nor there. Perhaps some day I may tell you how
1 came to eai'n praise I was always so proud of.
ClIRISTOFIIEli COMER. B5
This moi-ning I must take you with me in my walk
over the hills to see what was the matter with poor
Kitty, who was " took bad."
She lived to Little Comfort, as said before. What
that name means precisely, folks are not agreed
about. Some maintain that the prefix is an adjec-
tive of limitation, and points out you must not ex-
pect much when you get there. I, for my part, side
with those who lay the emphasis on the noun, and
only use the w^ord " little " as a term of affection,
just as the Germans do their diminutive chen.
Perhaps the meaning shifted with its inhabitants.
When old Granfer Lord lived there, I faucy the
" Comfort " must have had a tinge of irony in the
application. When I was there in the last year
of Kitty's life, and drank a cup of tea with her, and
ate bread of her own baking, and cream from her
own cow, and smelled the white jasmine that peeped
in at the window, and the roses in the great beaupot
which stood on the sill, I thought no name could
have been hit on to suit it better.
But whoever lived there, it w^as always " Little."
Just a kitchen back and front, with a " lean-to "
one side and a shippon on the other. And above,
a couple of chambers, and a sort of loft over the
shippon. Little as it was, Christopher would never
have got it for a shiliing' a week if it hadn't been
in such a tumble-down state when Granfer Lord
died, and his slatternly daughter moved into the
next parish. Farmer Pararaore, on whose land it
stood, hadn't any spare money to lay out on it, for
that was the year after the great failure of the
potato crop, and when the corn harvest was not;
much better than a failure. To be sure, bullocks
were looking up then, but just for a year or two
36 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
cash was very scarce. And wlien Christopher hired
himself to the Barton Farm, at twelve shillings a
week, the farmer said, "1 hear thee art going- to
settle and take a missus ; and, if thee will, thee can
have Little Comfort very cheap. I can't do nothing
in the way of repairs, but thee shall have it for next
to nothing. Think it over, lad."
So Chris thought it over, and said " Yes " to the
bargain. But he did more than say ''Yes." All
that year, when he had a day off, or an idle hour,
he was to be found down in the '' Bottom" where
the cottage lay — patching up the roof, plastering
the walls, white-washing the chambers, cleaning
out the shippon, or digging in the garden, so that
he might have all things in order by the time he
bi'ought home his missus.
That was already more than a year ago on the
day I started in my white sun-bonnet, basket in
hand, to see what was the matter with that same
missus, otherwise Kitty Comer, who had been " took
bad."
My mother came to the gate to see me off, and,
when she had watched rae over the bridge, and lost
sight of me as I turned to the left, up the steep hill
known as Cosdown Cleave, she went in again to her
sewing. But I, light of foot and light of heart,
climbed up the path that led over the Cleave to
Cosdown itself. More than once I turned to look
back. At my feet lay the blue sea, glancing and
gleaming in the sunlight; and running up the
opposite hill, and crowned by the church, was the
village we lived in. White houses, thatched roofs,
green trees, the brawling stream, spanned by the
two-aiched bridge near our garden gate — I see
them all over again in memory, almost as clearly.
CHRISTOPHER COMER. 37
and certainly with a keener sense of the svoudrous
beauty of that view, than I was conscious of then.
Fifty years may dull some senses, but it sharpens
the edge of others. On the down the air was sweet
with mingled odours of winter and spring. The
damp peat drying in the hot sun mixed its pungent
scent with the mellow sweetness exhaled from
thickets of yellow gorse in full bloom. There were
wheel-tracks through the heather and peaty ground,
and there were clearings in the furze-brake, and I
had no difficulty in finding my way to Little Com-
fort, though it was difficult to believe wheels could
really have gone di)wn the steep, almost perpen-
dicular, side of Cosdown to the Bottom, where the
cottage lay — just one little human home, nestled in
between a tiny stream and a tree or two ; a gai-den
plot, fenced in by a i-ough stone wall ; a potato
held, and, all round, the swelling heathery downs,
rising and rising, till all was lost in the blue haze of
distance. The farm whei-e Christopher worked was
not more than half a mile off, but it lay in another
dip, and could not be seen from where I stood, on
the edge of the steep, able to throw a stone, if I
had so wished, into the low chimney a couple of
hundi-ed feet beneath me.
" Thank 'ee, miss, kindly, for calling, and my
duty to the lady. A cup of tea's a real comfort
when a body s forced to bide all day in the
chimbley corner. My man, he doth all he can for
me ; and he's a real handy chap and dreadful good
to the baby: but I'm proper tired of kettle-bx-oth,
day in and day out ; and the bacon and cabbage is
what 1 cant make no use of. Missus, her's very
good to me too, and Chris fetches home a drop of
new milk for the little maid and a pint of scald
38 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
for me. And tlie missus, her'd have come herself
to see me, but her's terrible put about, having no
girl now, and the maidens bound to go to school
and all. But, please the Lord, I'll soon be about
again."
" How long have you been ill, Mrs. Comer ? and
vrhat does the doctor say to you ? "
" Bless 'ee, my dear, don't call me Mi-s. Comer.
I'm just plain Kitty, I be ; that's what all the folks
call me, though my christened name is Catherine,
after my feyther's aunt up to London. And as for
the doctor, miss, us can't afford to send for he ; and
I reckon he wouldn't come nuther, all this way.
'Tis just the boneshave I've got, and cruel bad it
was the first day I was took. It strikes you in your
bones, miss, it doth ; and then a body can't heave
nothing, and I was just forced to creepy about
two-double till Chris he come home and help me up
over the chamber stairs. And there I lay to bed
best part of a fortnight, I did ; and little Janey,
her were that cross I got most mazed with her,
'cause I couldn't wash her, nor do nothing proper.
Chris, he did all he could. He'd light the fire and
get his own victuals, and make a drop of kettle-
broth for me. But he couldn't bakey the bread,
and we was bound to get a loaf from the shop — and
that's poor stuff, is boughten bread ; it ain't got no
nature in it, Chris he saith. But he fetched home a
drop of barm last night, and my bread's hefting
fine, it is ; and the heai^thstone 'ill soon be hot, and
I'll bake the loaf under the dish-kettle : he won't
burn to-day, no tino ! for I've nothing to do but
sit here and watch en."
That was my first visit to Kitty Comer. But she
and I soon became friends, and her tall figure,
CHRISTOPHER COMER. SU
decided features, and rapid movements flash across
my vision often, as I think of bygone days. Kitty
was very independent in character; but if you have
a hungry and fast-growing family of boys and
maidens, and the earnings of the father don't
amount to more than twelve shillings a w^eek in
winter, and fourteen or fifteen in hay-time and corn
harvest, there is not much to spare after you have
fed them all, and the mother must bestir herself if
they ai'e to have decent clothes on their backs.
Kitty did bestir herself to good purpose, and yet
she was glad of neighbourly help. Our worn gar-
ments made Sunday frocks and coats for the little
ones, for her needle was seldom put away un-
threaded ; and ready-made baby clothes were always
a welcome gift to a busy mother. Bat these were
only now and then presents — just tokens of neigh-
bourly kindness, and accepted as such — never
begged for.
" Thank God, I've the use of my senses," Kitty
would say; and " "When the Lord sends mouths, He
sends meat," she'd often tell me. Political econo-
mists will perhaps sneer at this sentiment, and point
to the starving children in our London slums. But
then the question may fairly be asked, "Did the
Lord send them ? "
Kitty had no doubt whatever that her children
were sent her by the Lord, and I think I agree with
her. Anyhow the meat was not wanting. " But
however do you manage ? " I asked one day ; and
she, nothing ashamed of her thrifty housekeeping,
let me in to some of her ways.
" You see, miss, my man he's never idle, he isn't.
He's up with the daylight, and often before it, and
he keepeth the garden splat always tilled ; andwe've
40 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
a rare lot of taties this year, and green stuff, and
that moi"e than us can eat. And so us make shift
to keep a pig now. Chris he had a fine slip of a pig
from master, and he let un go very reasonable to
we. There were nine shillings I'd earnt up to
Barton by charing, and that just paid for un. And
what with the small taties, and the cabbages and
garden stuff, what we'd plenty of as I boiled down
for un, he didn't cost us a farthing till I put un in
to fat a month before Christmas, and then 'twas
four shillings for barley meal. And he was fat.
He made eight score and over, he did, when us
"weighed un. And us lived on chitterlings and such-
like for pretty nigh a month. The best part of
the loin 1 sold fresh in to Combe, and made near on
six shillings for it,— most enough to buy a new slip
with. But I wanted that money bad enough to go
against the boys' boots. Shoe-leather's the hardest
thing to come by, and us can't go barefoot. Then I
made up some hog's puddings, too, and they bought
'em to parsonage, and that was another two or three
shillings to go for shoemaker George. And the rest
of un I put in pickle, and it 'ill last us well on to
Michaelmas, I reckon. Us never looks to have fresh
meat, but a bit of pork is tasty like for dinner with
the cabbage and that. Sometimes, if I'm lucky in
selling a few flowers in to market, or mushrooms, or
worts, or the few blackberries the childer picks in
the Fall, I buy in a bit of suet and make 'em dump-
lings for dinner when the pig-meat's done, and so us
gets along to Christmas again. And what I gets by
a day's washing in and out with the farmers' wives,
I puts it all by for clothes for Chris. He must go
decent, he must ; and after I've bought the bushel
of wheat out of his wages, and got it ground to mill,
CHRISTOPHER COMER. 41
and paid for a drop of barm for the lief ting, and just
a candle and that to shop, there's not much left. I
got a stock of bees too, miss, last year; and Chris he
ordered np a fine bee-butt for 'em ; and I reckon to
make nine or ten shillings of the honey this year,
let alone a drop of metheglin for oiu'selves — it's
handy at christenings and such-like. One wishes to
pass a compliment round when the gossips come
home from church. And as for fii"ing, the childer
brings in a goodish bit of sticks and furze stumps ;
and mftister, he lets Chris have a load or two of turf
when the hoi\ses ain't so busy and can fetch it in.
For Chris, he's not one to make a fuss about work-
ing after hours when rain's coming and the hay out,
and the master he maketh it up to un one way or
another. And vearns and fuz for yetting the oven
us can always have for the cutting. Yes, miss, it's
a tight fit some whiles ; but us never lets the little
ones go hungry to bed, and the like o' we don't look
to live like gentry.
" Jackey, he's in his eleven, and a very handy boy.
I look to get him a place next Fall, and then we
shan't be so many mouths at home ; and many's the
penny he earns now by holding a horse, or running
arrants after school's out."
Up eai'ly and down late — tilling his garden in the
dewy morn, setting his potatoes in the slow twilight
— cleaning himself Sundays and taking the bigger
children with him " to prayer " in the summer
afternoons, lived and laboured Christopher Comer
many a long year. No one ever heard a word
against him. " A very quite chap," the neighbours
said, " and honest as daylight." Kitty was said to
bo too ready with her tongue, but none the less she
was always in request. She was strong and rapid;
42 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
no one j^ot through a day's wash like she did, and
her clothes always hung sweet and Avhite on the
line. And perhaps her sharp tongue and quick
decision of character gave the tone to the house-
hold. Chris would have " heard of it " fast enough
if he'd ever been seen coming out of the public.
"No fy! " I heard her say ; "my man know'th better
than that. A drop of home-brewed, such as he
getteth up to Barton in harvest-time, is not a bad
thing ; but that mucky trade up to ' Fox and Goose,'
it shan't go down his throat while I'm alive to
hinder it — and money out of pocket too, no tino !
What's given to mun is another thing ; but to take
the bread out of the children's mouths, no fy ! "
And so they grew up. Sometimes, in a hard, cold
winter, just before pig-killing time, the little ones'
cheeks would look rather pale, and Kitty would
have a gaunter frame ihan usual. Sometimes when
there was a new baby in the cradle, its mother
would say, " Thank you kindly, sir, and may the
Lord reward you," as the parson slipped half a
crown into her hand. But the children were always
welcomed as they came — " they bring their own
love with them " ; and Chris found his chief pleasure
in life standing at his cottage door on a Sunday
moi'ning with the last baby in his arms, and two or
three others a little older clinging round, " telling to
daddy." The children were kept to school — not
one of them but learned to read and write and
figure a bit. For though Kitty was no scholar, as
she often said, " she hoped she knew her duty," and
the school pence were duly hoarded in the black
teapot which was seldom used in those days for its
rightful purpose. In later and more prospei'ous
times, when Isaac was gone to sea, and Jane was off
CHRISTOPHER COMER. 43
to 'Merica and doing well thrive, and Bill carter to
Farmer Farthing, and Lizbutli gone to service Avith
the parson's aunt, away "up country," and little Kit
was learning carpentering, and three fine lads were
in the Queen's navy, and sending home a pound or
two to help father and mother and the four young
ones at home, then the teapot was often in request
for afternoon tea. Ah me ! many is the pleasant cup
I have drunk out of it, touched up with the cream
from Kitty's own cow. For a cow she had, that
was the pride and delight of her life in her latter
days. Her latter days — for Kitty Comer is gone
now.
But it was Christopher's history I set out to tell,
and I've drifted into Kitty's life, and her sayings
and doings. Good faithful wife and mother— but,
after all, what would she have been without her
man P
" Kitty, thee mustn't be so quick with thy tongue,"
I've heard him say. "It takes all sorts to make a
world." Patient beyond ordinary, " Good times
and bad times and all times pass over," might have
been his motto, if he had wanted one to live by.
Wet and shine, cold and heat, seed-time and har-
vest, Chris knew he had not the ordering of them,
but it was his to make the best use of whatever was
sent. " What dreadful wet weather ! " said I one
day, as he passed me with an old sack tied round his
shoulders. " Bless 'ee, miss, 'twill make the taters
grow like anything ! " was his answer. And when
the little Lizzie was cross, one hot summer day, and
wanted to stay in the cool house instead of fetching
" mother's arrants " home from Churchtown, he bid
her " never quarrley with God's sunshine, my maid ;
thee can't make it, and thee might mar it."
44 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
The worst I ever heard fi-ora his lips, when all
the land was crying' out for rain, and the lakes
di-ied up with long drought, was a hesitating remark
as he looked at the sky, '• 'Tis a pity fine weather
should ever do harm ! "
Up early, and down late. Hard work and no
great pay. So life went on. The boys and girls
grew up, as I said, and chose their own paths.
Father and mother would both have been better
pleased, I think, if the lads had stuck to the land
as they did. But the sea has often an overpower-
ing attraction for lads brought up within sight and
smell of it, and five of the young Comers became
sailors. The first who went was Bob, and him they
did gainsay ; the end of that was that he made a
runaway start — worked his way to the nearest port;
and, after long weeks of waiting and anxiety, they
got a few lines : " Dear fatlier and mothei*, this
comes hoping to find, you well as thank God it
leaves me at preasent, dear father and mother Im
tuk as boy on the Naufylus sailing from C^irdiff so
no moi"e at presunt from yer loving son Robbert."
Poor Kitty ! she shed many tears over that scrawl,
and many more followed from the same source before
she saw her lad again. She dreamed of him by
night, and watched the wild waves tossing from
Cosdown Beacon many a day, before he came back.
Little Dick, who died of scarlet fever when he was
three, and lay in the churchyard, cost her no such
anguish. " I know where he be," she would say ;
"the Lord took him to heaven, and I know he's
well off there, nutlier hungry nor cold; but Bob,
there's no telling what he's after, — and who's to
mend his stockings ? "
But they never gainsaid the others when they
CHRISTOPHER COMER. 45
talked of the sea as Bob had done. And the other
four went into the Qneen's service with their
father's blessing and a good bundle of well-knit
stockings. The world seemed bigger both to father
and mother, when letters came from the four
quarters of it, telling of what their bojs were seeing
and doing. They weren't much of scholars, but
between them and little Sara, who bided to school
longer than the rest because he was " dillicate," they
could spell out the letters when they came, and then
they would be folded away in the big Bible, and on
wet Sundays, when Kitty never went to church, she
had them all out to look at and tell over again. And
when either of the sailors came home, what a joy !
Well-grown fellows they were when they went
away; but discipline, and good clothes, and self-
respect made them hold their heads much higher
when they came back, jingling loose cash in their
trouser-pockets, and telling of all the wonders
they'd seen in foreign ports, as sailors do. Even
Bob the runagate came home a fine man to look at —
nothing of the collier about him, though his first
trip was made in a coal-ship; and he was well
thought of in the merchant service.
I sometimes wondei'ed what the world felt like to
Christopher as he got on in years. When the lads and
maidens were little ones, he could not have much
time for thinking. The Crimean war loomed in the
horizon, but Chris only "heard tell we was fighting
the Rooshians." The Indian Mutiny, the American
war, filled English hearts with horror and keenest
sympathy. Chris and Kitty were but pondering how
to get Isaac and Bobby new shoes ; while the squire's
wife, who had a sister married in India, forgot
Kitty's boys as she prayed for her far-away dear
46 DEVONSIUUE IDYLS.
ones ; and the parson, in liis anxiety about American
investments, failed in his Cliristmas gift of coal.
That -was souicthini^ near and tangible. America
and India were but words while her boys were yet
safe at home. But when they got their wings and
flew, what did America and India look like then, to
the father and mother who never saw a map, and
had never been twenty miles fi-om home ?
A bounded life has narrow interests and few joys.
Bat perhaps the joys are keener for being few, and
the interests deeper for their very narrowness.
Certainly uo one could take a deeper interest in the
crops and the cattle, and all the wild things that
nested about them, than the folks at Little Comfort.
Then the flowei-s they grew ! Stocks, double-
daisies, gilly-flowers (or, they call them in Devon-
shire, "bloody warriors"), I'oses, sweet-williams, and
jasmine all clustered round the porch, and were
scented through the casement window.
" I were always fond o' flowers from the time I
were but a little mite of a chap," says Chris ; " and
Kitty, her's dreadful took up with them too : and
there's ne'er been a time when us hadn't a few in the
garden splat, though when the children was little
us hadn't much like in the windows — a handful of
children makes both hands full of work. But there,
a body can mostly come what he sets his mind to,
and us set ours on a garden."
Set liis mind to. Yes, I think that was the
secret of Christopher's life. He knew what he
wanted, and set his mind to it. Many folks don't
know what they want, and they change their minds
first one way and then another, and so they "come
nothing." That Devonshire idiom " to come " any-
thing, is, I suppose, cousin to the German " be-
CHEISmniER COMER. 47
kommen." Certainly it is not the common English
word which implies movement of the body. It
distinctly implies mental acquisition. " I can't
come thiccy," says the little maid at school, sighing
over a difficult sum. Perhaps it implies power over
other things to make them move towards us. Any-
how, it's a solid truth that we can mostly " come,"
get, or become whatever we set our minds to.
Chi-istopher set his mind to other things outside
liis garden as well. He set it towards bringing up
his children to be a credit to him. They should
" lam behaviour," he declared, from their babyhood,
and learn it they did accordingly. " Behaviour "
covers a good part of life, and means a good deal.
" Behave theeself, Dick," says mother, when Dick
wants more than his share of pudding at supper.
" 'Tain't behaviour," admonishes father, when Lizzie
goes to sleep in church. And " Her knoweth how to
behave, her doth," was held to be quite a sufficient
character when Kitty took her eldest maid up to a
lady who was looking out for a girl to train as
housemaid. What the lady wanted her servant
to do could easily be taught her, but behaviour must
be learnt at home. And all the children, both boys
and maids, did learn it ; and, accordingly, when they
were put out into the world, they soon fitted into
whatever place was vacant for them. I never
heard of any one of them that they were square
pegs in round holes. How to behave towards work,
was to do it as well as you could. How to be-
have towards those that paid you wages, was to
mind what they told you, and say, " Thank you,"
when you got your money. How to behave with
regard to money, was to keep it against you wanted
it. How to behave towards youvself, was to be
48 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
clean and tidy, and "keep your clothes mended up."
How to behave to your neighbour, was to "lave un
boide." How to behave to the world in general,
was never to be beholden to it for anything you
could do for yourself.
Self-respect carries a man thi'ough many diffi-
culties, and it carried Chris well on to seventy years
of age. Year by year he had more comforts about
him. Year by year he held his head higher. Year
by year one or other of his children came back to
see father in the old place, and tell of their doings
to ears that were getting hard of hearing. Then,
too, they would talk of "poor mother," and go to
lay posies on her grave, and tell of all " her ways,"
none of which would Chris allow to be altered by
any of them. Polly, the youngest maid, who came
home from service to keep father's house, complained
sometimes that he would not let her bake the bread
on Thursday, because mother used to do it on
Wednesday. "Her always had her reasons, had
Tiy missus; and though I don't rightly call 'em to
mind, I know they was good ones, and us can't do
better than stick to them." And Wednesday it had
to be.
Time goes on, and Chris still lives, but he is up in
years now, as he owns himself; and when chance
bi-ings me near Little Comfort, and I drop in to see
him, the conversation is mostly on one side, because
he can't hear at all what I have to say. Not that it
much matters. Conversation proceeds on regular
lines in those out-of-the-way corners of the world.
He can guess well enough what I have to say
about the weather and the time of year, and
answers accordingly. Then there are the proper
compliments to be made about our health ; and a
CHRISTOPHER COMER. 49
mau who " knows behaviour " so well can always
fit in his information about Polly's husband (for
Polly is married now, but not gone far from the
old home) and the baby into its proper place with-
out hearing my sympathetic answers.
Last time I went it was a Saturday afternoon,
and I expected to find Polly there, "ordering np
the place" for Sunday, and darning father's stock-
ings. Instead of which, Christopher himself, with
iiis silver-rimmed glasses on, was sitting on the
window bench, stitching at his shirt buttons him-
self.
" Iss fy, miss, there ain't much I can't turn
my hands to when needs must; and Polly, poor
maid, her's got a nymping-gang, and her can't do
naught. So I fetched off work a bit early, and
washed down the kitchen ; and Danny, he'll clean
down the dresser and that, when he cometli — for
mother her never liked to see things out of the
way on Sundays. It had to be all clean and
polished then, kettle and all, and so it shall now.
Her'd often speak up to me and the boys if us came
in Avith mucky boots, or didn't lay out our Sunday
clothes vitty afore ns went to bed. Us never
forgets it now ; and I reckon her's pleased if her
can see us, and I sem her can wherever the Lord's
seen fit to take her to. Danny, he's a bit fearsome
at times ; he says he knows there's a spii-it or
some'at following nn up over the chamber stairs
in the dimpses. But I tell he that if 'twere her
spirit, her wouldn't do un no harm. Her was alius
good to us while her was here ; and why should her
be different now ? And her was always right down
glad to see 'ee, miss, and so be I."
The ground-plan of life for human beings is laid
E
50 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
down on certain well-known simple lines, which
apply all the world over, and, for those who can
follow them out, living has its joy and its reward.
Labour and rest, night and day, food and sleep,
marriage and rearing of children, are the warp and
weft of earth's existence, whether for queen or
people. Some make a fair pattern of their web ;
some tangle the thread and throw the shuttle
angrily. Some weave slowly a good solid ground,
and finish off with a golden fringe. But what we
weave we must wear, and it is all we have.
Chris and his wife wove steadily and truly the
I)attern their forbcai-s had taught them. And
when I hear in church the Evening Psalms for the
27th of the month, and we come to that verse be-
ginning, "Thou shalt eat of the fruit of thy hands,"
and ending with "Oh well is thee, and happy shalfc
thou be," I think of Christopher Comer, and how he
lived and laboured, loved and lost.
THtJ SCHOOL AND ITS
SGUOLAUS.
THERE are schools and schools — that we all
know : schools where a little learning is
knocked into dull heads with many raps from
schoolmaster's cane ; schools where many rules
of grammar are taught and few rules of conduct;
schools where the children are turned out pro-
ficient in fractions, and well able to define the
boundaries of Russia, and to tell all about the
aborigines of Australia ; schools which show np
well in the inspector's reports, and get good
" gi'ants ; " Board schools, where the mistress slaves
at her book-work and at grinding her pupil
teachers, but gets her dinner anyhow ; voluntary
schools, so called, where the parson's wife bribes
the mothej'S by frequent treats and universal prizes
to send their little ones to be taught ; and com-
pulsory schools, where the master dare not turn out
i rebellious or impudent urchin, much less chastise
him. Such, and many more of varying shades of
character, exist up and down through the length
and breadth of the land. But the school I am
{;oing to tell you about was not one of these. How
many years ago it held sway does not matter; it
62 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
was "once on ii time," and its whereabouts Avas in
Devonshire.
If 3-ou had <fot np early enough on a winter's
morning', you might have seen the ehihlren gatlier-
ing together from the lanes and over tlie common ;
some making short cuts across a field for the plea-
sure of having a stone fence to climb at the top
and a brawling stream to jump at the bottom. I
have seen them often, when the moon was not set,
and the last few stars were just fading away in the
dawn, trooping along with thick naily boots and
rosy cheeks, and then making a sudden run to be in
first when they saw " governess " in the distance,
coming through the Lawns, with her st^ut umbi-ella
in one hand and her bng of books in the other.
Generally they were all in their places against she
reached the school-room door, and the old clock in
the corner pointed to five minutes before eight ;
and the bright faces looked brighter as they all
stood up with a sharp bustle and shonted out, " Good
morning, ma'am." Children's voices are apt to
partake of the nature of a shout when each one
wants to " speak up " for fear governess shouldn't
hear his particular " good morning " and know he
was " behaving; " and the tones were only a trifle
moderated by the thought of the reproving eye and
the quieting reminder, " Hush, my dears ; I'm not
deaf yet."
There was one little maid that was most times
late, however, but even she was generally in before
all the names were called, and if not, there was
always " law given " to Nanny Hooper, for she had
a longer walk than any of the others, and never
missed, rain or shine, though the three miles that
lay between her home and the school was rough
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 53
walking, even if she came by the i^oad ; and she
111 )stly l)rought her breakfast in her hand — a slice
uf dry bread — and ate it as she came.
Nanny was only ten years old, or, as she pre-
ferred to tell those who asked her age, "in my
eleven ; "but she was the eldest of six brothers and
sisters, and " mother's right hand." In that capacity
she had to nurse the baby while the other four were
being washed and dressed, and to sweep out the
kitchen and fill the tea- kettle from the spring
before she started for school.
" Nanny must go to school now," her mother said,
"or else she'll never get no larningafoi-eher's growed
big enough to be put out to get her living. But
dear so'se ! ma'am, it's hard to spare her, for she's as
handy as a woman, for all her's so small of her age."
I wonder which was the most use to Nanny Avhen
she was " put out in the world," — the reading and
writing she learnt at school, or the handiness she
got from her mother's teaching at home ? However,
that is a question you and I have nothing to do
with: in fact, we had better not attempt to answer
it one way or another. The law of the land has
settled it for us, that learn to read and write we
must, whether we like it or not ; and Heaven send
we make some use of our accomplishments !
Nanny did like it. To walk three miles, regard-
less of weather, and then to sit and rest in a warm
room with other children, mostly older than herself,
and all better dressed, was indeed happiness : and
to take tui'ns in reading the chapter in the Bible, to
say tables, and be shown how to write her copy
without making blots, was far easier and pleasanter
work than fetching in furze to heat the oven with,
or carrying about a heavy child.
64 DEWNSIHRE IDYLS.
Yes: Nanny loved cominii^ to scliool, and so did
all the others. Nobody need hribe them to ])e good
children and not go miching. Their fathers and
mothers often said what a fine thing learning was,
and told them of the times when they were little,
and had no chance of schooling. If a child was
naughty at home, mother used to wonder (out loud),
" however governess could have the patience to put
up with the maid, and teach her lessons, when her
was that stupid in scrubbing down the chamber at
home ; she was sure her'd never make no hand to
her book ; " and the gravest disgrace that could
befall an idle little maid at school was to be told
that, if she didn't want to learn, governess certainly
wasn't going to take the trouble of teaching her,
and she had better not come any more. This hap-
pened to Susan Vicaj-y once, when she was dawdling
over her sums, and governess had found her twice
in the act of catching flies instead of adding up
figures. Governess got up and opened the dooi- for
her, and said, " Good morning, Susie. Tell your
mother I've given you a week's holiday." Govern-
ness said it quite politely, and smiled at Susie as
she reached her sun-bonnet down and hung her slate
up on a nail. But Susan burst out weeping, and was
found by the others, when school was over, hanging
about the door with red eyes, afraid to go home.
The next morning, Susan and her mother were
there before any one else ; and, with many protesta-
tions from Mrs. Vicary that she Avas properly
ashamed any child of hers could be so ungrateful,
and many tears and promises from Susan, the
week's holiday was rescinded, and every child in
the school got good marks for attention, not only
that day, but for long afterwards.
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLAllS. 55
Tfc was not much leai'uiug these children got, in
spite of their attention and governess's best en-
deavours. The room was small, being, in fact, only
a cottage kitchen, and twenty children filled it,
leaving no space for blackboard, or maps, or desks,
or any of the paraphernalia thought necessary
nowadays for teaching. There was a long oaken
table down one side by the window. There was an
oaken settle by the hearth-place, where the cottage's
proper occupant sat and knitted when she was at
home. There were three forms and two chairs, on
one of which governess sat when she had time to sit
at all. When there wei'e more than twenty children,
some of them had always to stand ; and whether
there were twenty or twenty-five, every child
wanted individual attention. Scarcely two were of
the same age or capacity, or were learning the same
lesson at the same time. They came at eight o'clock
in the morning and stayed till half an hour after
noon had struck ; but they had no more for the day
— the distances were all too great for the little ones
or governess to take the Avalk twice over. It's
against all rule to work four and a half hours
straight off ; it's against all rule to have so many
scholars in so small a space ; it's against all rule to
give holidays as punishment. But all this happened
before the Education Act was passed, and if you
sit with open door and a fine current of air through
a wide chimney, there's no fear of suffocation ; and
if you get plenty of bodily exercise in the afternoon,
a little extra application of your brain in the hours
of forenoon has no bad effect, and the balance is
kept. But, after all, they get very little learning,
as I said before ; and we are told "a little learning
is a dangerous thinsf " !
5G DKVOXSIIIUE IDYLS.
I don't think mysflf that is qnite irno. Little
minds can only tiike in a little of anytliing^; the
overplus runs out to waste like a teacup too full.
What the mind can make use of, it Avill surely
letain. James Farthini; never pot beyond the rule
of three, but he learned that joyfully, and it was at
the tips of his fintjers, as we say, when he left
school (he catnc for three winters only, and earned
the money for his schoolinir in the summer), and
had to gfo out in the world and earn his livinsf.
And he took his ci[)herini7 book with him, and when
he had a bit of time evenings, he used to take it out
and do over the old sums for pleasure.
Jem certainly had no more than a little learning,
but it was no soui-ce of danger to him ; quite the
contrary — his little learning stood him in good
stead all his life. If a young man appi-enticed to
the blacksmith ing can reckon up his master's books
at the end of the year, and make out the little bills
for shoeing the farmers' horses, and set against so
niau}' chain-harrows mending, and so many new
wlieel-tlres, the price of the haulage of a ton or two
of culm, and make no mistake in the final amount
due to the smith, that lad is sure to be reckoned as
" vallyable," and to be brought on well in all the
trade mysteries by his master, even though there
may be a blot on the little account sent in to Farmer
Lethaby, and even though, if you could have taken
a look at Jem as he sat writing, you would have
been amused at the way he squared his elbows, put
his head on one side, and rolled his tongue.
But the school inspector, when he came, was not
at all amused. He was very much displeased. He
scoffed at Jem's attitude, and his " rule of three."
" What ! a big lad like that ? he must be fifteen, I
THE ISCnOOL Ayn its scholars. 57
should think. He ought to be in fractions. I'm
afraid, Miss Palfreman, we must ask for some change
in the management of this class," etc., etc.
That was long counted as a black day in the annals
of our school — the day the inspector came. No one
was any the better for it, and some were much the
worse. It was a shock to the constitution ; and, like
all shocks, it took time to get over.
It was such a nice morning, too, that Monday,
when the parson sent down the strange gentleman,
without a word of warning, to see the school, where
all the bigger children of the tiny parish Avere
assembled. I i-emember it well. Monday morning,
and all the frocks were clean ; every face bright and
rosy. Martha Crick, at the top of the class, had the
privilege of bringing governess a big banch of clove-
pinks and southernwood ; and the posy stood in a
blue jug in the centre of the table, where the copy-
books were laid out in order, and a dozen or more
eager little heads and willing right hands were wait-
ing for the word of command to begin writing. And
what was the copy ?
" It's in the New Testament, my dears," says
governess, as she stands with her Bible in her hand
before she begins to dictate ; " but I shan't tell you
where, because I want you to find it for yourselves.
What we find for ourselves, after much looking for
it, is apt to stick in our memories. And I want
this to stick in yours. It's the writing you've got
to think about now, and the spelling, and where to
put in your stops, so that you can I'ead the sense of
it proper. And you shall write it over six times,
and whoever has more than six mistakes will get a
bad mark. Six times will print it on your minds ;
and whoever can say it over without a mistake, and
&8 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
bring me chapter and verse by next Sunday, shall
come home to tea with me after prayer is out."
And all pens being dipped, and all eyes fixed,
governess gave out slowly and clearly all through,
and then once again, word by word : " Study to be
quiet, and to do your own business, and to work
with your own hands, as we have commanded you."
There were one or two who felt sure they should
be invited to tea next Sunday. There was Martha,
at the top of the table, and Samuel Tucker, who
sat next to her. They knew all the names of the
books in the New Testament, and vei'y rarely
muddled up the Gospels and Epistles. Willy Tucker,
who was allowed to sit next his brother, because he
was shy, having only just come to school, made a
false stai-t with " Study to be quite ; " but he never
thought much about his spelling, if only he could
get done as soon as his big brother. Chi"istopher,
who came next, was the sexton's son, and prided
himself on knowing more " textes " than any other
boy in the school. He felt sadly put about at not
being able to remember having heard, this par-
ticular one before. He would get out his Bible
dii^ectly he got home and begin to read " Acts " all
through ; he was sure he should soon put his finger
on it.
Alice Bevan was certain that Matthew had said it
— or was it one of the Romans ? Anyhow, she had
all the week before her to find out. There was no
time to think of that now ; governess had given out
the verse all through, and with a last injunction to
remember — " up-strokes light, down-strokes heavier,"
had turned her attention to the second class, who
gathered in a ring round her, and were waiting to be
questioned in their " tables," when a tap was heard
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 19
at the door, followed by the entrance of a strange
young gentleman in clerical dress.
" Good morning," said he ; " I've been calling on
your parson, by the bishop's desire, as his lordship
is very anxious to ascertain the state of education in
his diocese, more especially in those out-of-the-way
spots where there is no certificated master or mistress
under the rule of the National School Society. He
tells me, however, that there is a very efficient
school in this parish, kept up by voluntary enter-
prise, and by your leave I should like to examine it,
in order to make my report as complete as possible."
Governess had time, while this little speech was
being made, to face the position, and to consider the
dilemma in which she found herself. She looked at
the young man in his correctly cut clothes, and his
" Nugee " hat. " Not long in orders," was her
mental verdict, "fresh from college, and chosen to
be diocesan inspector on account of his good degree."
Would he be able to examine her little flock, and find
out what they knew ? If you don't know what the
children are being taught, how can you ascertain
what they have learnt ? But he was waiting for
her to speak — she must rise to the occasion. To
decline his proposal would condemn both her school
and herself as failures. There was nothing for it
but acquiescence.
'• Certainly, sir," said she, with her best air of
politeness, setting the gentleman the only chair in
the room which could be made available — her own, —
and placing it as conveniently as was possible for
facing the children who Avere writing at the table.
" Perhaps you would like to look at their copy-
books — the big ones are just doing their writing-
lesson — a dictation, to-day, out of the Bible."
GO DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
" Presently, ma'am, presently," he replied; "it is
best to do tliin<,''s in order. I always begin at tho
beginning. Children," — standing up and clearing his
throat, which was affected by the peat smoke fiora
the fire on the hearth — " Children, reading is the
most important factor in education ; to be able to
read clearly, correctly, intelligently, is the first step
on the ladder to success in this world. The Prime
Minister of England had to learn to read when he
was little ; the Queen of England was taught her
alphabet before she was four years old ! First class,
get out your reading-books ; 1 wish to hear you read."
" Not got any reading-books ? Do 1 hear aright ?
Is this possible, ma'am ? "
" Yes, sir; they don't learn to read with me ; I do
not take them till they have passed out of the Infant
School, which is held in the church vestry, and there
they leai"n to read. When they come here we read
a chapter in the Bible every morning first thing, and
that is all we have time for ; and we have no other
reading-books."
"A chapter in the Bible! A very bad plan —
teaches the children irreverence to use Holy Scrip-
ture as a school-book ; and besides, it is not that
modern English which it is so essential the rising
genei'ation should get a full command over. No,
thank you, no ; I do not wish to hear them read a
chapter. I am sui-e the bishoj) would not counte-
nance any such proceedings ! "
And the young man, who had brought out his
report-book, wi'ote as first sentence under the head-
ing of "Muttlebury School," " Reading neglected ;
no reading-books supplied. Mem: To tell bishop
about the Bibles." Aloud : " 1 should like to ex-
amine the childi'en in spelling. Stand up."
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 61
The youngsters who were accustomed to stand
round governess, to repeat their spelling, and other
lessons in the vacant part of the tiny room, giving
up their place at table for the little ones and their
slates, not only stood up, but began to sidle out from
their forms behind the table, and the little second-
class to sidle in.
'' Keep in your places," ordered the gentleman,
wondering what was going to happen.
Governess began to explain.
"Allow me, ma'am; I must conduct the exami-
nation myself " — in an aside ; " be kind enough not
to interfere."
Before every one was in place again, another note
had been added to the report — " Very bad order in
school ; number of seats insnfBcient."
But the children could spell fairly well, and, when
once started on " able, ability ; blessing, blessedness ;
curious, curiosity; duty, dutiful," went on swim-
mingly till the spelling-book was shut up, and the
gentleman began to try them with strange words, to
test their ears for sound, and their knowledge of
syllables.
Martha stared blankly at Samuel when asked to
spell " perturbation," and William blushed to the
roots of his hair at " technicality." " Please, sir, us
haven't learnt he," at last he found courage to say.
And the examiner wrote in his report, " Spelling
learned by rote ; no knowledge of syllabic sounds ;
books old-fashioned."
By this time tears were being hastily dried on
the corners of the clean Monday pinafores. The
boys, too proud for such manifestation of feelings,
but unequal to these demands on their brain power,
looked pale and cross. Instead of being asked,
G2 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
" How many sheep must you shear in an hoar, if
you have to finish a flock of 300 in one day, and you
Lave only 5 pairs of shears to do it ? " when Timothy
Whidden would have worked the answer out in his
head first, and then neatly put it on his slate ; he
Avas completely confused by having a sheet of paper,
ruled and numbered, placed before him, and told
to work out with pen and ink, while five minutes
were allotted to him for time, the unheard-of ques-
tion, " If 327 men can consume 109 cwt. of bread in
11 days and f, how much does each man require per
diem ? "
Abstract ideas are completely foreign to the mind
of a country lad. Tim had never seen so many men
together in his life ; why, there were not two hundred
people, men, women, and children all told, in the
parish ! And a hundred- weight of bread, what did
that look like ? Mother, when she baked, had a
bushel of wheat and sent it to mill to be ground,
and it made thirteen big loaves and lasted the family
about a week. He bit the end of his pen, he dipped
it in the ink-pot three times, he scratched his head,
but when the gentleman said, " Time's up," poor Tim
had but two blots and a smudge by way of answer
to show up. No wonder he got a bad mark. Is it
not the first duty of a scholar to be ready to grasp
ideas foreign, and Avords new ? Timothy could only
work amongst the familiar. Alas for poor governess,
who used to take hold of the thoughts and facts
already at home in the brains of her pupils and work
out with them the useful problems of life ! Alas
for the poor little maidens, who in the grammar
lesson spoke of definite and indefinite articles, and
had never heai'd of " adjectives absolute " ! The
inspector shook his head mournfully, and said he
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 63
was afraid his lordship would be much disap-
pointed.
Let us draw a decent veil over the remainder of
that morning. The inspector is gone, disappeared
into the darkness of the past. His report is neatly
printed, and lies, one in a dusty heap of pamphlets,
on the office shelf, amongst other diocesan records.
But the children are still alive — out of the twenty-
two present that day, but one has passed away to
the silent land, and twenty-one still survive, and, as
grown men and women, play their part, and help
to make Devon what it is. Do they play their part
well or ill ? Perhaps that question will answer
itself later on. Meanwhile, the children are a
pleasanter subject than the examiner: let us go back
to them.
They were not all good. I don't pretend they
were. But, as a general rule, they came because
they wished to learn, and because their fathers and
mothers had pointed out to them Avhat a fine thing
" learning " was, and how kind it was of governess
to teach them ; and, accordingly, they applied their
small minds to learning, and absorbed such know-
ledge as they could assimilate, and was useful to
their state and condition.
Timothy Whidden got over his discomfiture with
respect to the hundred- weights of bread when it
was explained to him next day, that ciphering on
paper was not so useful to him as the power of ready
reckoning in his head, which he was so proud of ;
but how could a strange gentleman from London
tell that, or, indeed, know what his business in life
was likely to be ? But governess knew, and gave
him an opportunity of distinguishing himself by
working out a veiy difficult question with regard
64 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
to mugs of cider and firkins of beer, relative to corn
harvest and labourers' wages, -which Tim found no
trouble in applying to the workmen on his father's
fai'm.
Martha looked rather pale as she took her place
as usual next morning at the top of the table ; but
the bad taste of those ugly w^ords " perturbation "
and " technicality " was taken away by governess
dictating an imnginary letter, for the first class to
write, to an imnginary cousin in London, in which
they described the ferturhation the whole school was
thrown into by the strange gentleman's visit on
account of the technicalities of an examination with
which they were not familiar. Like a shying hoi'se
which has to be brought up close to the di-eaded
object, they all looked askance at one another till
they had learned what those " nasty words," Avhich
had brought them to grief the day before, meant,
and how they were to be used. When they once
found out that " perturb " was first cousin to a very
old friend, " disturb, " and that " technicality " was
nothing like such a bad word as it sounded, they got
the five syllables written down without more ado.
And when governess gave them leave to write the
letter over again in their own language, and to leave
out anything which the problematical cousin would
not be likely to understand, the smiles all returned
as they dipped their pens afresh, and proceeded to
inform dear Cousin Jane that " us was properly
terrified, for the words of him were as long as a
kite's tail, and hadn't no sense at all."
And that was the end of the spelling lesson !
Though, I dare say, if you were to ask either of
those children, even to-day, how to spell "techni-
cality," you would get it correctly given without
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHjLAUS. 65
hesitation. But I wonder if the knowledge has been
of the slightest use to them ? Would it come under
the head of education proper ?
There was one Jacob, a curly-headed lad, full of
nonsense and high spirits, amongst those twelve who
were writing on that memorable morning. Indeed,
it was his spirit of restlessness and habit of inter-
ference which infected the class at times, and put
governess up to making them learn that said text.
" Jacob," she said sharply, tui^ning round a day or
two after from correcting sums, and seeing those
roguish eyes fixed on the window, and a pencil
balanced on the tip of the little pug nose, — " Jacob,
what are you about ? "
" If you please, ma'am," was the answer given,
with great gravity and politeness, " I'm studying to
be quiet."
Every one laughed. Who could help it? But the
urchin did not get the best of it after all, for gover-
ness quietly retorted —
" Quite right, Jacob, as far as you've got ; but how
about the rest of the verse ? Are you doing your
own business, and working with your own hands as
I have commanded you ? "
Poor little merry Jacob ! he has learned to work
with his own hands, he has gone through many
troubles, many adventures in foreign lands, many
vicissitudes of life and fortune, but he has never
forgotten that morning's snub, which lost him the
prestige of being the readiest-witted in the class.
" What good are his wits to him," asked the sober-
minded ones, " if he don't know the difference be-
tween a whole and a half ? "
Did we learn irreverence by using the Bible as
a lesson-book ? Many a time has that question beea
F
m DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
asked, but I think we should always have said " No "
to it. On the contrary, governess used to maintain
that it taught reverence for God's Word. It was
read each morning as the first lesson of the day,
and she told us that if we were not able to read our
Bibles and understand something of what the holy
men of old were inspired to write for our be nefit
learning to read would be of little use to us. '* The
Bible is the fii-st of all books," she used to say ; " and
if I can't teach you, my dears, with its help, to be
good children, and sensible children, and to mind
your duty, and learn how to live in this world, I'd
rather shut up school at once." No, no, whatever
else the children didn't mind, they knew they must
mind when the Bible was being read ; and if any one
was not there in time, a whole good mark was sub-
tracted from the day's sum-total. And how they
would all try to understand what they read, for they
knew governess cared more about that than any-
thing else !
Very funny were the mistakes made sometimes.
" Do 3'ou know what is meant by the Feast of Dedi-
cation F " was the question asked when the tenth
chapter of St. John's Gospel was the day's reading.
The question was passed round till it came to Janet
Tucker, a big gii'l, and not over sharp.
" Yes, ma'am ; it's the school feast."
" Oh, Janet, Janet ! can't you think of any feast
without meaning curranty cake and cream ? "
thought governess, with an inward sigh at Janet's
stupidity ; aloud, however, she said —
"What makes you think of the school feast,
then ? "
" Please, I thought schooling was the same as
eddication."
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 67
After all, it showed Janet thought about the
words, and tried to understand ; and many folks, even
more learned than Janet, and with the very best
intentions, read their own ideas into Bible words.
The confusion between schooling and " eddication "
is one which Janet's betters often fall into. Samuel
Crick also thonght about what he had read, when,
being questioned on the last chapter of St. John's
Gospel, he summed up St. Peter's curiosity, and
the reply our Lord thought fit to give him, in these
words : " St. Peter, he wanted for to know what
should come of John, but the Lord He wouldn't give
un no satisfaction ; He told un 'twasn't no odds to
he what happened to John, and he should mind his
own business."
Perhaps, indeed, some folks who can express them-
selves moi'e elegantly do not grasp the moral so
clearly. But, then, Sammy came of a family who
were noted for minding their own concerns, and so
his little brain was alive to accept teaching which
fitted in so well with preconceived ideas of right and
wrong. After all, the best education can but draw
out, and train up, and foster the latent forces and
the seeds of good which have been already planted
in a child's being.
Sammy went to sea when he grew up, and now,
like St. Peter, he owns a boat, and catches fish,
and mends his nets on the shore. Last week, I over-
heard him talking to his wife, who was worrying
over a neighboui"'s " nasty " ways, and saying, as
women will, " 'Twould sarve un right if I telled the
parson of mun."
"You lave un boide, Sally," was his answer.
" 'Tain't no consarn of yours."
Sammy Crick is reckoned a very honest man, ana
68 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
neighbourly ; and I don't wonder at it — the world
goes best when we sweep our own doorsteps.
But I must not go on too quickly. Five and
twenty years ago the children were still at school,
and learning their lessons. I want you to see what
sort of lessons they were, and how their lives and
their schooling were woven in together ; and then
you can look round on the men and women they
have grown up into, and ask yourselves the question,
" Was it for good or for ill they learned this or that,
and learned it so ? "
The Bible lesson was the first, I have said already;
and what came next ? Repetition of hymns, spell-
ing, and the Collect for the week; writing of copies;
writing from dictation, which was always something
governess wished to impress on our memories.
How all longed and tried to be the one who should
show up the writing-book without a mistake ! But
that could not often be, even when governess helped
us with the spelling of a new or long word. Some-
times it was a bit out of the newspaper. Sometimes
a piece of poetry. Sometimes one of Miss Marti-
neau's charming descriptive chapters in " Health,
Husbandry, and Handicraft," that furnished subject
for our pens ; but whatever it was, we had to
remember it. Next week, or the week after, or it
might be three months hence, governess would ask
what we knew about the prospects of the corn
harvest in America, or the way the Dutch people
made their butter and cheese ; and woe to that
child who could not write down from memory some
sort of sensible account of that information which
it had once written from dictation. And then the
two pages were compared, and it was seen what the
writer's memory was most retentive of. Governess
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. G9
laid great stress on a correct memory. What fun
tlie children thought it when she wrote down on a
slip of paper an imaginary message which had to be
delivered to an imaginary person, and then whispered
it to each child before they left school, and told
them to bring back the answer next day ! And
what a laugh we had at the crooked answers some
of us brought, and which did not fit at all with the
question when it was read out ! Perhaps this was
only play, and not lessons. But those who went to
service when they grew up, and remembered what
they had learnt as to the faithful carrying of
messages, got praised by their masters and mis-
tresses for good memories and good sense.
What a child is taught when it is little, whether
in play or in earnest, becomes its stock-in-trade
when it is grown up. And governess never forgot
the sort of homes we came fr"om, or the calling it
was likely we should follow in later years. Being
country children, our sums, instead of dealing with
abstractions, were made living to us by tossing
about queries amongst loads of hay, the market
price of wool, and the average number of pounds
of butter produced by each cow in a given farm in
one year, and what was the cost of keeping a pig,
and how many children could be fed on ten shillirgs
a week when wheat was so much a bushel. Thus
they never learned "one thing at a time," which
some authorities maintain is the only way to learn
anything well. They learned the first principles of
domestic economy, while they learned at the same
time to master the mysteries of Practice and Rule
of Three. They learned to look beyond their own
little bounded horizon as they wrote dictation. They
learned from beginning: to end of their school-life
70 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
that manners and pretty behaviour go to the making
of ns — the making of the men and women they
should grow into. To be told that they had " no
hem to their garments " was what prevented many
a rude word or slovenly habit. An image well ap-
plied sinks deep into the childish mind, and colours,
half unconsciously, the surface of its life.
In July and August school broke up. There was
much to be done at home in those months. Haytime
and harvest came and went, and then in September
we gathered together again.
Once a year came our school feast, when we had
tea in the parsonage fields, and marched thex*e in
pi'ocession through the warm June lanes and over
the breezy common. James Hawkins walked first,
being a big strong lad, and able to carry the school
flag. Then came the other children, two and two,
and governess in a cart behind, laden with the great
basket full of buns. She used to make them herself,
I know, and good they were ; and though she would
get lip at six o'clock to set them hefting, the last
batch would be taken hot out of the oven when she
started at two o'clock in the cart.
Mrs. Gregoiy sent the butter by her two little
lads. Mrs. Crocombe would bring the cream for
tea herself, for fear her Matthew, whose hands were
full of flowers with which he was bent on decking
the horse's head, should spill it by the way. Par-
sonage dairy would supply the milk; and a pound
of tea always found its way by some hand or other
into the parsonage kitchen by the time the big ket-
tle was boiling; and a loaf or two of farmhouse
bread was never wanting.
The school feast was not only a school feast ; it
was a gathering of all the mothers in the parish to
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 71
meet governess, and to talk over their children's
progress in the last year — to tell what they wanted
for the future ; to plan and to ask advice about the
coming winter. And no one came empty handed.
Tables were spread in the field for the elders.
Children sat on the grass round ; each one bi'ought
his own mug to drink out of, and not a child had
dreamed of tasting any dinner that day. " What's
the use of filling your stomach with pork and cab-
bage, when there's cake and bread and jam, as much
as you like, for tea at four o'clock ? It would be
flying in the face of Providence," said they. I
think I can hear their songs as they march abreast,
so brave and bright, with flowers in their hats, and
laughter in their eyes, and pride in their gait.
How sweet they looked in their clean pinafores
and fresh-combed hair, boys and maidens walking
hand in hand, and drawing up in a semicircle round
the verandah at the rectory, where sat the parson
and the parsoness, with perhaps a friend or two !
How the childi'en vied with one another in making
their best bows and curtseys to the gentlefolks !
And then all joined in singing the hymns and songs
which they had learned since last feast. Next came
the games, and tea, and little presents to be raced
for, and the strolls round field and garden by way
of rest, and chats to friends and kindly notice from
the parson. Finally, the Evening Hymn rose on the
air, and with three cheers for governess, and fi'iendly
good-nights all round, the fathers and mothers
picked out their little ones, and formed into shadowy
groups as they wended their way over the common,
contented to be very tired, since it was the fatigue
of pleasure. They turned their faces homeward,
and soon were lost to view in the dim twilig-ht.
72 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
I hear the little brown owls hoot again, I listen
for the nightjar's burr. The land-rail seems to
have never ceased its cry from then till now, as I
stand once more on the furzy mound just outside
the rectory gate, and count how many glow-worms
I can see — or fancy I can see. For it all happened
five and twenty years ago, and the commons are en-
closed now, and the children grown up, and I am
far, far away.
I read in last week's Exeter Gazette that the
children in the Board School at Muttlebury were
visited by her Majesty's inspector, and that they
passed thirty per cent, in grammar and drawing.
I wondered, as I read, whether the dairies and
poultry yards keep up their credit in that neigh-
bourhood. It sounds very well, doesn't it, to read
of thirty per cent. ? And the ratepayers will, no
doubt, pull out their purses more cheerfully in
consequence. But I am telling you about a school
Avhere the children passed cent, per cent, in the
science of living, and for which the ratepayers never
pulled out their purses at all. The inspector did
not " think much of them," it's true ; but inspectors
are but mortal men, and fallible in their judgments.
There is another test which no one gainsays, and it
is the test of experience. Two out of that band of
scholars, about sixty in all, lie asleep in Muttle-
bury churchyard ; the rest have grown up into men
and women, all useful, all contented, all healthy,
and more or less prosperous. Not one, and I can
count them all, has turned out a drunkard, or a fool,
or an idler. And under these circumstances the in-
spector's opinion of them does not count for much.
Analysis and free-hand drawing seem, rather
superfluous acquirements for folks who have to milk
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLABS. 73
cows and plough fields. And yet you and I ai"e
dependent for the comfort and health of our house-
holds on those very men and women who look after
the dairy and gather in the corn. All life comes
back to the cultivation of the land in its first lines.
From this basis proceed all the possibilities of civil-
ization. In our ideal of education, I suppose, we
are sti-iving to bring the blessings of civilization
into closer contact with the cultivation of the soil,
so that Nature and art may walk hand in hand
through a beautified England.
But life is too short for a man to learn everything
and do everything. His span of life is still bounded
by seventy years, and, out of these, how many can
be given up to what is commonly called " educa-
tion " ? Amongst the people on whom rest the
security and the foundations of English society,
that is the labouring classes, certainly not more
than one-fifth, or fourteen years, and generally in
the country not more than eight or nine, are devoted
to book-leai-ning or schooling proper. Surely those
few years — one might almost say those few months,
for a child's school hours are but twenty-five per
week, and that but for ten months in the year —
should be used to fit it for the life it is leading, and
is likely to lead in the future, and not for one it has
no chance of entering, and for which the market is
already overstocked. Grammar and mathematics,
drawing and French, are accomplishments which do
not find their place in the life of an agricultural
labourer, and would lend no grace to the home
where his wife must wash and bake, sew and cook,
if she would play her part as good missis and good
mother.
But enough of reflections — you can make them
74 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
for yourself. I will go on with, the story of my
school.
There was another break in lessons at Christmas,
but it was only for a few days; unless Christmas
Day fell on a Friday or Saturday, school began
again on the Monday after. On Christmas Eve, we
always had a preliminary pudding down at the
schoolroom, and it was a standing joke to ask the
old Avoman of the cottage what she had boiling in
her big crock. Surely it wasn't washing day, one
or other would surmise, as the steam bubbled up.
It was held " manners " to ignore expectation of
the pudding, because that was governess's special
present to the childx'en ; and who could tell for
certain whether her purse was full enough to
warrant her in laying out the needful sum for suet
and plums this year ?
It was never mentioned beforehand, and was
treated as a gi'eat surprise, when, at half-past
twelve, old Mary Avould say, just as the little ones
were gathering up their books and slates, —
" I sem there's some'at a-boiling in my pot as ye
might like to have a taste of, if so be as ye bain't in
no cruel hurry to get hoam to yer dinners."
And then would come the cheerful answer, —
" No, no, Mary ; us bain't in no particular hurry
to-day."
And Jacob would pull back the forms, and Lizzie
reach down the plates, and governess would lay the
cloth; and out of many a pocket would come a spoon
— iron, it's true, but clean and bright — put there by
the careful mothers when they started the young-
sters in the morning, with many injunctions not to
show it " till thee knows if there's any call for it,
Jack." Mary's dresser could muster a score of so
of plates, but spoons would have run short else.
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 75
This was the first taste of Christmas-tide, and it
was sweet. A little joke, a trifle of mystery and
expectation, is dear to childx-en's hearts; and if
governess, as she often did, invited Louey or Jauey
home to tea Avith her about a week or ten days
beforehand, there was a pleasant laudei-standing
that it was because her help was wanted in chop-
ping suet or stoning raisins (we used to call them
figs), and what a delightful secret to keep from the
other children! Only "mother" got wind of it,
and would say to her good man as they were sitting
in the chimney corner —
" I say, father, hain't it your turn to fetch gover-
ness home a load of firing ? I reckon they 'ill want
an extry lot of turves or some'at to keep that great
crock o' Mary's a-boiling on Christmas Eve."
And the farmer would scratch his head, and say,
" Well, well, the little maid's getting on fine with
her book ; I'd as lieve hear to her reading out a
chapter as the passon hisself : and as for Jackey,
he can count the sheep like a man, that a' can ! Iss,
fy, governess shall have the turves. I reckon I can
spare a horse to fetch 'em in before then."
And, sure enough, there would be a nice little
heap of turves, and a bundle or two of faggots landed
at the cottage door, some morning before man and
horse went off to their day's work of ploughing.
And long before that heap was done, one or another
little maid would bring a message to school —
" Father's got a little load of wood waiting for
you, Mary, if you'll please to let him know when
you've room to house it."
'Twasn't likely Farmer Ward would let Farmer
Gould have to say "nobody took thought for
keeping the cold out of governess's bones but he " !
76 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
It was cold, sometimes ; very cold. Bat as no
one lived veiy near the scliool — it was a mile and
more away from most of the houses, and two or
three fi'om some — there was good run for every
one, both before and after scliool, which kept the
blood in circulation.
Once — it was only once, I think — that Shrove
Tuesday, being a very cold hai'd frosty day, gover-
ness let the children off lessons at ten o'clock, and
said they should all have a run to warm them np.
It was when the measles were about, and more than
half the children were absent. And the parish,
according to old custom on that day, was going out
to shoot the foxes on the cliff.
Foxes were rampant in those early spring days.
We met them in the lanes as we were going to
school, before the sun was up. They played havoc
amongst the young lambs. No farmyard was safe,
and the farmers' wives brought their young chickens
into the back kitchen at night. As to killing them
by fair means (which, I have always been told, im-
plies a pack of hounds and a lot of red coats), that
was out of the question. And so the farmers would
go out with their guns and dogs on this one day in
the year, and hunt them out of their fastnesses in
cliff rocks (where they brought up their families of
bright-eyed cubs), and shoot them down without
mercy. No doubt it was very shocking. Most men
seem to think that to shoot a fox is next door to
murder. But we who thought much of our turkeys
and geese, thought less of Reynard, and were glad
enough to get rid of him by any means. And fox-
skin muffs and rugs were very fashionable amongst
the farmers' wives in those parts.
As many as seven fell before the guns that Shrove
THE SCHOOL AND ITS SCHOLARS. 77
Tuesday, I remember ; and we came home tired and
hungry ab six o'clock. The bare bhxck rocks and
the cliffs red and grey, with here and there a clump
of old dark green yew trees, rise up before my mind
as I recall that day: the yapping dogs, the shouts
of the lads, the waves of the angry sea dashing into
the caves below, and the red glint of the setting sun
going down behind Lundy Island.
A pretty figure those children would have made
in an inspector's report that day !
The passing of the New Code may be a very wise
measure ; I am not going to set myself up against
the opinion of my betters ; I was brought up to be
careful how I gainsaid those in authority. Bat just
now public opinion is rather chaotic on the subject
of the best sort of teaching for the little ones, and
we all have a right to speak of our own experiences.
Individuals differ, and so do their needs in the
way of education. Localities are vaiious, and what
suits the country would be futile in the town. But
wherever we live, it is well to bear in mind that
life is very short, and that, after all, you can't put
more than a spoonful into a spoon !
THE PATGRWOEK QUILT.
"TTTHEN tliee can sew vitfcj, little maid, I'll give
Y Y 'ee some patches that 'ill set up a fine quilt ;
and a nice patched bed-quilt is a thing every maid
should have against her's wed. And it can't be
made in a day nor a year, and so thee must take it
in hand betimes, for there's a many stitches go to
the making of it."
Little Janifred Rattenbury was sitting on a low
form (without any back to it) in Ashford school-
house, and it was a hot June afternoon. Her little
fingers were warm and sticky, her big brown eyes
full of tears ; for governess, as they always called
the schoolmistress, had just pointed out to her that
none of those grimy stitches in the cloth she was
hemming were set suant, and that she would cer-
tainly get a bad mark for her sewing if she didn't
do very different in the next half-hour. To sit in-
doors of a fine hot afternoon is bad enough of itself ;
to sit still and learn to sew is still worse. But to
know that you will get a bad mark as well, is " cruel
hard."
Janifred was only eight years old, and passion
soon flares up in a child's heart. In another minute
the thread would have snapped, and the tears fallen.
But old Mrs. Thorne, who had just looked in to
have a word with governess about her grand-
daughter who was to leave school for service in a
78
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 79
week or two, happened to cast a glance at the
child's stormy face. Thei-e are some folks in the
world who always put fire to fire, and are surprised
at the blaze which follows. Ilrs. Thorne was not
one of these. She did not say, " You be a stupid
maid, then, Janey, — eight years and not able to sew
no better than that ! " On the contrary, she
quenched the fire of passion in the little bosom, and
let in the sunlight of hope. To have some fine
pieces out of Grranny Thome's chest, — to "set up"
a quilt just as if she was " growed up," and ready to
take a place like Rebecca Thorne, who was sixteen,
and " did up her hair," and wore a black alpaca
apron on Sundays instead of a pinafore, — to make a
quilt against she got married, that was something
worth living for ! Janey drew a long breath,
twinkled away the tears, straightened her back,
looked up in the kindly face bent over her, and said,
" Thank ye, ma'am ; then I'll try for certain."
But school was nearly over, and Janey's thread
Avas grubby and knotty, and, with all her tryings,
the bad mark was inevitable. The next day, how-
ever, was better. By mother's advice she washed
her hands very clean after dinner, and did not stay
about on the road to school, picking wild straw-
berries. And, somehow or other, the afternoon did
not seem so hot, and her thimble was not missing ;
and governess set her a fresh clean duster to hem,
and Janey felt that each stitch was looking more
like what it ought to look ; and she kept on thinking
of the quilt, and what sort of patches Granny Thorne
would give her, so she forgot to look out of window
and wish she was running after the ducks that
quacked so loudly in the meadow behind the school-
house.
80 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
That was only the first day of many on whicb
Janifred tried to sew " vitty." But before she was
ten years old Mrs. Thorne had signified her approval
of some needlework she had sent down to the scliool
to be done, and which governess had returned to her
by the hand of Janifred with the message that, if
the old lady was pleased with the sewing, she might
look out the promised patches, for that Janey had
done the most of it.
Granny Thome's chest contained wonderful bits
of all sorts, and Janey went home overtlowing with
joy. What might not be made of bunches of rose-
buds on a white chintz ground (the cuttings from
some grand lady's sofa-coverings ; for Granny
Thome's father had been an upholsterer in Barn-
staple many years ago), and then those bits of all
the gowns granny had worn since her marriage ?
These were the beginning of Janifred's beautiful
bed-quilt, — but only the beginning. When she was
sixteen she came to us to be trained as a housemaid.
" I hope her'll be a good maid," said her mother,
when she brought her down to our house and stepped
into the parlour to have a word or two with my
mother before she left. " Her taketh a wonderful
good band to her needle, her doth ; and her can dusty
and scrubby fairish. But her wanteth a bit of
looking to now and again about the corners and
that, or else her might happen to neglect them.
And will you please to let her come home sometimes
after prayer is out o' Sunday afternoons ? for her
father and me'U miss her sadly, I reckon, for a time.
But there! none o' us likes to part with the children
when they'm grown up, for all they'm such a hand-
ful when they'm little."
Janifred was a good maid, and before the year
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 81
was out my mother advanced her wages from the
shilling a week she began with to a whole pound
a quarter. She proved very handy indeed with her
needle, as Mrs. Rattenbury had promised ; and many
a time I helped her to plan the pattei'ns in that
famous quilt, which grew apace in the four years
she lived with. us. Whenever there was nothing
else pressing to be done, out came the bag with the
patches in it, and many a wet afternoon it kept my
little brother happy and busy listening to the his-
tory of every bit in it, and sorting the bundles of
patterns to find a pink or a blue that matched, or a
good contrast for the stars that were to form the
border.
And then she left, and went up to London, as
young ladies' maid, and earned higher wages, and
was taught to cut out, and fit, and mend lace, and
all sorts of fine work. That was — how many years
ago ? I hardly know. But all those old days
came surging up before me last week, when I went
to see Janifred's mother in her little cottage by
Two-bridges. She is a widow now, and alone in
the world — or pretty nigh alone, for her grand-
children are scattered, and only come to see her
now and again. I suppose she has money laid by
somewhere, for she has no one to work for her, and
she is certainly not " on the parish." She used to
live at the mill when her man was alive, and be-
tween them they kept the country round pretty
well supplied with bread, for she baked the flour
he ground ; and two or three times a week the old
horse was " put in the sharps," and the cart was
carefully laden with delicious hot loaves, fresh from
the clonien oven ; and then, covered with a thick
white cloth to keep the dust off, one of the brrys
G
82 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
would take it out over the common and down the
cleave, which was the way to Combe Stratton, the
pretty little fishing-town where so many visitors
came in summer.
I never heard of a baker making a fortune. The
price of the staff of life has to be carefully kejjt
down to the means of the many. But still, the man
who grinds the corn, and the woman who kneads
the dough and " yetts " the oven, have to be paid
for their time and trouble. And for all you spend
time and trouble on— making a good thing and a
necessary thing- — there remains a margin of reward
over and above the customary cost of living. ]f
you are thrifty, that margin has a way of spreading
itself out to embrace the days when time is nearly
over for you, and trouble a condition of the past;
when the days have come for rest, and the hours
for labour are at an end.
Mrs. Eattenbury had been thrifty all her life,
and so now she is turned of seventy-six, she is living
in comfort on that margin of profit laid by. J
should not like to say where it is. Some may very
likely be sewed into her " bed tye." Other bank-
notes are probably to be found in a mortgage on
that same little mill-house where once she kneaded
her dough to the sound of the swirling water from
the overshot wheel, and the clanking of the grind-
stone mixed with the crackling of the furze which
glowed in the open mouth of the big clomen oven.
Anyhow, she has a tidy home of her own, where the
brass warming-pan shines brighter than gold, and
the Avell-scoured teapot on the mantle twinkles an
invitation to look in as you pass by her open door.
It was many, many years since I had seen her.
Time and trouble had brought their messa^'e to both
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 83
of us. I "was down in that country after long ab-
sence ; and, in looking np old liannts, and recalling
once familiar names, I asked for her.
" Sarah Eattenbury ? Iss, to be sure ; her that
used to live to mill. Iss, her's alive yet, and very
lusty for her age. Her gitt'th about considerable,
for her's a good neighbour, and very handy at a
death or a christening. Her knovs^'th "what's -what,
that her doth. Her's a teiTible clean "o^oman, too ;
and nobody can't come up to she "when there's a
baby in the "way. Iss fy, you can't miss her. Goo
straight on, and you 'ill see a turve-heap by the
roadside, and her house handy to it."
The scent of the smouldering peat turves on the
hearth "was strong as I put my hand on the latch ;
and there sat Sarah Eattenbury within, drinking-
her cup of tea, quiet and alone in the evening of
life, with the tall shadows of the ash thrown across
the floor, as the sun flickered through the branches,
and lighted up the dark corners of the little kitchen,
where no dust lay even for a minute.
" Here's an old friend, IVfrs. Eattenbury. May I
come in ? "
" Why, dear heart alive, if 'tain't Miss Annie !
Well, I never ! Who'd a thought to see you again,
and all these years come and gone ! Only to think !
I'd a known your voice anywhere. But you'm
altered, my dear, you'm altered; terrible fallen
abroad, bain't yon, now ? And you that was such a
slim maid, too ! But, there, 'tis what we all come
to. Sit ye down, sit ye down, my dear. I'm that
glad to see 'ee. And won't you plaze to take a cup
o' tea ? "
Pleased ? I should think I did " please." Visiting
old places and old friends stirs up the inner depths
84 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
of one's being-. We go back to the roots of life.
We remember what we thought and felt and did
when we first were becoming conscious of our-
selves and of individual life. At seven years we
are but a part of nature and the things around us ;
we live and move and have our being in home.
At fourteen we are discovering that there is a
" me," with a life of its own. At fifty we learn to
sit loose, even to our own selves, and know that the
world and its forces are rolling on faster than we
can grow, and that, by-and-by, we shall be left
behind. But at fifty, to come loack to the scenes in
which our soul first took life and form makes sudden
demands on the physical frame, and the cup of tea
was welcome. Where does one ever get a cup of
tea as fine-flavoured as that which the old-fashioned
country woman sips at her own fireside ? Cei-tainly
not in the houses of our lady-friends. The country
woman may economize in the handling of her tea,
but she never economizes in the buying of it. A
cup of tea is her one luxury, and it must be good.
Accordingly, she buys the very best. Then, too,
when four o'clock comes, the kettle, which was
filled from the spring half an hour before, has just
come to the boil, and the little black pot is carefully
warmed by the fire, and the fragrant leaves uncurl.
I was thirsty, and Sarah's tea was a grateful
refreshment as we sat and talked. There were all
the childi"en to ask and to hear about. One was
married, another was dead ; three were in America.
George, her husband, was buried in the old church-
yard, through which he had carried his big bassoon
every Sunday in the old days, and tuned it up in
the gallery while the parson was putting on his
surplice behind the vestry door. The gallery is
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 85
gone as well as George and his bassoon, and so is
old Farmer Tapp and his flute.
" They've got something they calls an harmony,
my dear, but it's a poor thing to hearken to, let
alone to lead the singing; and it don't come none of
the good old tunes we was all so fond of yeai's back.
Ah ! it used to sound beautiful when my man lifted
the tune, and Martha Danells her led off with
' High let us swell our tuneful notes,' and the big
bass viol, and Tom Danells' fiddle, and Farmer
Tapp's flute followed it up."
Mrs. Rattenbui-y was ready to cry, and my tears
were not far off. It was time the conversation
should be turned.
"Ah, many's the time Janey and I have walked
up over the cleave to church in those days. Do you
remember that white shawl, with the flowers on it,
I used to wear, and that Janey had afterwards ? "
" Mind it ? " said Mrs. Rattenbuiy, in a tone of
surprise. " Why, I've got un now. Poor Janey,
her set gi-eat store by that shawl, ' 'Cause Miss
Annie give it me,' she'd tell ; and I keeps un always
laid up in lavender ever since her died. He only
comes out to christenings. All Dick's children have
been took to church in that there shawl — all but
the last baby as was born after his father died,
and he didn't have no luck at all. Susan, that's
Dick's wife, her went over to her mother's house,
out to Hoar Oak, and the baby was carr'd to
church thei'e. And Susan, her was that put about
wi' Dick's death, and one thing and another, her
didn't think upon the shawl till Sunday morning,
and then 'twas too late to send over six mile to
where I were living then, to borry it ; and the poor
little mite had to be wrapped up in any common
86 DEVONSIIUIE IDYLS.
cloak, just to keep it warm, and it never had no
lack at all. It catched measles afore it was six
months old ; and so soon as ever it could stand alone,
it failed down and broke its collar-bone. And when
the teeth of it were breeding;, it got a proper scald
head; and it were but going on for three, when it
wasted away till it were nothing but a rames ; and
two years agone last Michaelmas, its poor mother
had to bury it away to Combe, where her's gone to
live — a strange place, and no belongings to follow
it to the grave, and there it lies all alone. No; it
never had no luck at all, hadn't Dick's youngest.
I'd have lent Susan the shawl and welcome, if I'd
knowed in time. But there ! 'twas to be, I reckon.
The others, they'ni all strapping lads, and 'ill do
well, I reckon. Joseph, he's the eldest, and now
and again he comes and stops along of his granny
for a bit. He goes to school out Molland way.
Dick's old master have a-put un thoie ; and he
learneth fine, so they tell me. He's like my Jani-
fred for that. None of the other children ever took
to their schooling like her did ; and wasn't her a
hand to her needle ! You 'ill mind that bed-quilt
her patched when her was living with your ma.,
Miss Annie ? I take en out sometimes, and look
to en, and shake en out in the sunshine, and air en
a bit. "Would you like to see en, my dear ? "
Poor, pretty Janey ! The quilt that was to be
ready against she wed — the " pieces " from Granny
Thome's big chest, the bits of my childish frocks,
my sisters' and mother's gowns, and the servants'
aprons, all finding their niche in it, — hexagons
and squares, neatly fitted together; a beautiful
quilt, beautifully sewn; — there it was, after five
and twenty years, just as fresh as ever; and Jani-
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 87
fred lying iu her gi'ave, with daisies and king-caps
for a coverlet. It nevex' served the purpose it was
ordained for. Janey died young, and with never a
house of her own, or a husband. Aud yet it was
the thought that warms so many a girl's heart that
nerved the idle little fingers to learn to sew, and
overcome pi-esent difficulties by the hope of a future
joy. Are we put here to accomplish anything, I
wonder ; or are we only learning the use of our
tools for future work ?
"Don't you ever lie under it, Mrs. Rattenbury ? "
I asked ; " the thought of Janey's fingers would
make it pleasant to you, 1 think."
"No fy, my dear, that I don't. I got some new
wool and quilted en up myself the first winter after
her was took, for I'd never had time to doit before,
though her left en with me for the purpose when her
went off the last time ; but I never haven't had
the heart to use en. I takes en out of the drawer
now and again, and looks over the patterns, and
it's all like a story to me; and I sem I can see her
again, with her bright eyes and all her vitty ways.
And I can see the old church, too, and yoa and your
ma coming up over the hill to prayer. And I say
thiccy there is the gown that missis wore; and
thuccy were Miss Louey's, with the pink flower ; and
poor old cook, her had the dark stripe give to her at
Chi'istmas, and Janey the laylock check. And the
middle of en is Granny Thome's smart chintz with
the red and yellow roses. 'Tis all spread out so
plain as a map. And one time, when I were bad
with the barngun, and forced to lie abed, I had en
out just to throw over the blankets and that, when
the parson come to see me. It look'th well, you
know, miss, to have a bit of needlework about, so
8& DEVOXSIIIRE IDYLS.
as to let folks know you don't come of a thriftless
lot. And my old bed quilt, what I patched as a
maid, he's most wored out. Sixty odd years he's
worn and washed, so the colour of un is pretty
nigh gone. That's the manner of we old folks, and
our things match us. But Janey, her was took
young, and her work 'ill last many a long year yet,
and serve as a pattern to them as come after me,
what good sewing should be. There's a many don't
know nowadays what a needle and thread's for,
and they run about with their tails all reaping and
their stockings in holes — nasty boughten trade,
there's no wear in it."
Janey died young ; and her mother sat alone in
her little house by the turf-heap, and thought of
her dead children and the years that were gone.
And sometimes she sighed for Dick, and sometimes
the tears dropped fast on Janey's quilt ; and then
again the smiles came Avhen she remembered that
no one else in the parish could show such a tine
coverlid when the parson went his rounds among
the bed-lyers.
But Mi-s. Rattenbury was not the only one who
mourned the lost Janifred.
" No, my dear, no, Miss Annie, her wasn't wed,
and that you know so well as I do ; but I don't say
'twas never thought on like. If her had lived
another year out, I won't say what wouldn't have
come to pass. There was a fine young chap used
to be always after her, and her never comed home
but what he was down our ways, on one arrant or
another, every evening. I reckon you 'ill call him
to mind when I nameun. He was Charley Richards'
son, out to Cosgatefoot ; and he was put young to
the blacksmithing, and a veiy good hand he took
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 83
to ifc, ho did. And whenever the maid were home,
he come over to prayer at Ashford, though he didn't
rightly belong to we're parish. He was christened
Peter, that was the rightful name of him, but he
were always called Curly, 'cause of his hair, which
never would lie vitty like another lad's. Janev,
her wouldn't have much to say to un first go off.
He used to look a bit smutty, yon know, Miss Annie;
but there, 'twas the fault of his trade like, and a
good trade 'tis too. I wouldn't have stood in his
light if she'd fancied him, and sometimes I think
her'd have said ' Yes,' if her hadn't been took when
her was. Last time her was home before her caught
the chill which settled on her lungs and carried her
off so sudden, her brought that there quilt with
her, and her says to me, ' Mother,' her says, ' when
you've got a bit of time to spare, will 'ee get some
wool and set it up in the frame and quilt it for me ?
I might want it one day, you know.' And her
smiled to herself and coloured up. But I didn't
ask no questions ; I knowed her'd tell me time
enough if 'twas to be. So I only made answer,
'Iss fy, my dear, I'll see to it. Will 'ee have it
dimonds or runners ? Anyhow, 'twill be a hand-
somer one than ever your father and mother lay
under.' And iust then us heard a whistlinar cominof
down the road, and Janey her looked out of the
window, and then her coloured up again, and her
snatched up the spread and ran upstairs with en.
And afore I'd time to say, ' Why, whatever be 'ee
scared at then ? ' there was a tap at the door, and
Curly stood looking in. ' How be you, Mrs.
Rattenbury ? ' said he, quite polite. But I knowed
he wasn't come to see me, so I said, ' Middling,
thank 'ee, lad. Won't 'ee walk in ? Her 'ill be down
90 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS
directly, and I've got my baking to look to.' And
so I went on putting- up the dough, which was all
ready when the maid had called me off to tell about
the quilt. And by-and-by her come down, and
her was very stiff with un for a bit, — her was nearly
caught, you see, anH a maid don't stomach that easy.
And then he asked her if her was coming to praj^er
next Sunday afternoon, 'cause, he said, there was
going to be a fine wrastling after the folks was
out. Squire Chanter, he'd give them a silver spoon
to wrastle for. 'Twas Revel Sunday, you know, miss ;
and it always used to be the manner to stick the
prize up in front of the gallery, where all the lads
could see un. Cut there hadn't been a wrastling
not for several years back, there hadn't — not on
Revel Sunday, I mean. Old Parson Tom, he'd
nothing to say agin' it, he hadn't ; but that time
his lady was ill, and he had to take her to foreign
parts, there was a curate come for a year or two
to look after things, and he was dead against the
wrastling. He didn't know much about country
ways, you see, and would have 'twas sinful. And
he went about up and down through the parish,
and there was a lot of talk, and the end of it was,
that no one gave a silver spoon for several years.
But that last year as Janey came home, he was
gone; and Pai-son Tom, he were back again, and
the men-folks was all wild to try their strength.
And the parson, he said, ' Let 'em wrastle, if they've
a mind to, and good luck to their backs. I wish
I was young myself.' That's what he said. And I
think he was right, I do. So long as they catch
hold fair, and don't wear naily boots, I sem it's a
Christian j)lay, just so well as that there cricketing
parsons nowadays tell so much about. A manly
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 91
sport they call it, and I dessaj 'tis, I've no call to
say nothing agin it ; but a good wrastling-bout
carries a deal more sense in it, to nay thinking.
" Well, Janey her said her'd go; and Peter he
said, ' If so be as I get the silver spoon, 'twill be
some'at towards housekeeping ; ' and he glimpsed
up at her so cunning, just to see how her'd take it.
And Janey, her said, ' Get along with you. Curly !
What's a silver spoon to do, if you've got no broth
in the pot ? ' But, for all that, her went to church
Revel Sunday, and father and I Avent too ; and
Curly, he got the spoon, for he throwed Jan Tucker,
and Jemmy Bale, and Lewis Elworthy one after the
other. And he said, ' Please the Lord, I'll get the
fellow to en next year, and then there 'ill be a pair
of us.' But next Revel Sunday the old parson was
dead, and so was my Janey, and that was rayley
the last of the wrastling in our parish. Parson
Green — he that's here now, miss — he won't hear tell
of it at all : he's all for crickets, he is ; but I can't
see, for the life of me, that it's anyway better.
Parson Tom, he made a fine sermon about it that
Revel Sunday, I mind ; and he'd got his text out
of the Bible, too, and 'twas all about wrastling.
' You'm bound to wrastle, young men,' says he ; 'us
have all got to wrastle with Satan, and the braver
us can tackle him, the likelier us 'ill win ; and the
Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force,' said he,
' therefore, " quit you like men, be strong : " ' that
w'as his text. Miss Annie, and I often think upon
it. But there ! times are different now. But Cui-ly
Richards, he won the spoon, and 'twas the last one
ever stuck up in front of the gallery. He's done
well to his trade, has Curly ; there isn't another
blacksmith this side of Bratton as can titch un, so
thev tells me."
92 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
The shadows were lengthening on the grass out-
side as we gossiped thus over our cup of tea. Poor
Janey's quilt lay in the window, and caught the rays
of the setting sun. Mrs. Rattenbury stood up, and
"wiped the tears from her eyes. The cows went
lowing down the lane; the geese were marching
home in long row across the grass ; faintly in the
distance I heard the clank, clank of the smith's
anvil. The village world looked the same as it used
to do when I was a little girl. The roses smelled
just as sweetly. The turf smoke still curled blue
as it rose towards the bluer heaven. But Janey
lay quiet under the daisies and flowering thyme — a
coverlet how different to the one her fingers had
fashioned ! The parson preached, too, from a very
different text when I attended prayer in the old
chui-ch next Sunday. He impressed on his flock
the duty of almsgiving, and bade them never forget
to put their shillings in the offertory bag. The
gallery was gone, as well as the spoons. The vil-
lage school was remodelled to suit the Education
Act, and Charley Richards' grandchildren learned
gi^animar and analysis for lessons, and crochet and
crewel work at home, and made chair-backs and
coseys for their mother's best parlour. And old
Sarah Rattenbury sits in her little cottage by the
turf-heap, and thinks of the days that are past.
Those days will never come again. For good or
for evil, England is changing fast. But we old
folks still cling to the ways our mothers taught us,
still love to tell of the customs of our youth that
to-day are thought so odd and old-fashioned.
1 picked a sprig of thyme from Janifred's grave,
and put it between the leaves of my Bible as I left
the churchyard. On one page I read the words,
THE PATCHWORK QUILT. 83
" For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge,
nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest ; " and
on the next, " Say not thou, What is the cause tliat
the former days were better than these ? for thou
dost not enquire wisely concei-ning this."
THE TRUE LOVE OF BARNABAS
BUTTER AND BETTY KICK.
BEFORE I tell you any more about my liero and
heroine, please take notice of their names.
And don't fancy I invented them, because I did not.
Mr. Barnabas Butter and Miss Betty Kick were real
names of real people, who lived so long ago that it
does not much matter how candidly I relate their
sayings and doings.
Perhaps you may think their names were odd ?
They were of a different opinion, and considered
them to be veiy good ones ; and, indeed, they were
thought well of through the country. Betty held
that "Barnabas" was distinguished, and matched
her husband's fine stalwart appearance. While Mr.
Butter never called his wife "Elizabeth" unless he
was angi'y with hex- — which, of course, happened
sometimes, for Avas he not a man and a husband ?
But " Betty, my dear " or " Betty love " was her
constant name for fifty years of married life. That
is, in the privacy of home. Abroad, or before
strangers, of course, she bore the more respectful
appellation of " the missus."
Barnabas and Betty, then, lived and loved. In
what fashion is just what I am going to tell you.
Perhaps the fashion may seem to you as antiquated
'91
BARNABAS BUTTElt. 95
as their names. If so, ask yourself the question
whose fault it is ? For my part, I should be sorry
to think that common sense and plain morals were
ofone out of fashion, and buried with Barnabas and
Betty in Leaworthy * churchyard.
Love is of various sorts. The sort which found
favour in the west countiy sixty or seventy years
ago was of the delicately sentimental nature tinc-
tured with stern practicality. And " life," Barnabas
Butter said to himself, when he was two and twenty
and began to think of settling, — " life takes a deal
of living ; a man can't just sit down in the settle
his father left him, and let it go on as it will. I've
got to live it, and how can I live it alone ? There's
the dairy to see to, and the victuals to cook, and the
chickens to feed, and the stockings to knit. 'Tis
sartin, Barnabas chield, thee must take a missus."
So communed our hero with his spirit, as he
walked up and down his trim garden, the day of
his father's funeral. Friends and neighbours were
gone home, and it was late in the evening of a July
Sunday. The winds whispered it, the leaves rustled
it, the brook murmured it, the bees buzzed it as they
hurried home laden with sweet nectar from honey-
suckle hedges, " Barnabas ! Barnabas Butter, thee
must take a missus ! "
The bees put Barnabas in mind of his duty to-
wards them as well. He went straight into the big
hall where his old great- aunt Charity, with the help
of a stout girl, was putting things to rights.
" Can you give me a bit of crape, aunt ? I'd most
forgotten the bees, and I mustn't go to bed till that's
seen to."
" No, fy, thee mustn't, lad. Yes, I'll get thee a
* Piouounced Loo'ortby.
96 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
bit directly." And the old lady hobbled off to a big
bureau in the coi'ner of the entry, and fetched two
or three strips of black stuli', which the young man,
with a grave air, carried into the garden, and fas-
tened to the legs of the stage on which the bee- butts
stood.
" Bees, bees," said he, slowly and solemnly, as
he tapped on each straw roof, " your old master is
dead ; will you work for the new one ? "
There was a murmur of assent, and the new
master walked once more by the privet hedge, and
past the blush roses that hung over the porch, and
again all nature chimed softly in uni.son with his
empty heart, "Thee must take a missus, Barnabas
Batter; take a missus ! "
While the new master sleeps on that first Bight
of his mastership, we will make ourselves at home
in his domains, and take a look round the land that
is crying out for its missus. The shadows of the
tall poplars lie softly on the gi^ass ; the crescent
moon is sloping to the west ; the white owls flit
round the barn ; the big night-moths hover on the
lavender bushes ; the faint trickle of running water
but shows up the utter silence which had settled
down on Buzacott Farm before the kitchen clock
stmick eleven.
Buzacott Farm lay in the parish of Leaworthy
aforesaid. A parish so poor and so out-of-the-way,
that in those days there was a doggerel rhyme
handed about from one to the other in that part of
the country, and which a stranger was sure to hear
of, if ever by chance a stranger inquired his way
there.
" Leaworthy ? " they would answer ; " what, Loo-
orthy, where the gi'eat spile was adood, where nine
BAliNABAS BUTTE Ji. 97
mecs ate a liappord o' cheese, and ruined all the
poor farmers to Loo-orthy ? "
No doubt there was a siibstratura of truth in this
ironical query. But if the soil was rough and stony
there was plenty of it, and the old farmstead was
not crowded up with neAV roads and iron fences. It
lay in the midst of its own fields and meadows and
lanes. A big orchaixl came up to the milking cotirt,
and straggled down to the edge of the stream. The
stream dawdled along through "inner One-park,"
and "outer One-park," and joined itself to the
" water " which, ran down Millcombe through the
tall purple loosestrife, and pink downy willow-herb,
which Aunt Charity called codlings-and-cream.
Above the old house came the barn and the sloping
green, where the geese cackled and straddled all the
summer through, till, corn harvest being over, they
were driven one day, and found their own way the
next, in the golden " earidges " * of the " Braun-
chen." The green was bounded by many fields that
all had thick hedges; here and there a big elder
i^eared its head, and spread its milky blossoms all
through June, and drooped its boughs laden with
purple fruit in September. And the fields all had
their OAvn names. There was the "Rilland," where
Barnabas would go to pick cuckoo-flowers when
he could only toddle along, holdmg by mother's
hand; and the " Tilland," where he sought for
mushrooms to bring home for " feyther's breksis,"
when he was bigger. But that was years before the
press of living hampered his soul. My hero was
a boy once— a boy who, like other boys, thought
nothing of life, but a great deal of his breakfast and
supper ; and who ate and grew, and grew and ate
* Pronounced " harisbes."
98 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
a2;-a,in, till bis mother would crj, " Bless the lad,
whatever will he come to ! "
And this was what lie had come to. A stalwart
body, strong for work ; a mind shrewd and keen
with regard to his own business, but very simple
and childlike with regard to knowledge and "book-
larning," as he named it. He stood six foot in his
stockings, and looked round on the maidens witlj
a merry blue eye. Which of them would he marry?
For marry he must ; the farm wanted a missus.
" Take thoe time, lad ; take time," said-old Aunt
Charity. " Don't buy a pig in a poke."
" Time ! I han't got no time," quoth he. " There's
shearing not begun, and hay harvest just on us.
Bless us and save us, a chap's got no time to go
courting in ! "
But if Barnabas had no time for looking after a
wife just now in the busy summer weather, the girls
in the farmhouses for many miles round were all
sending thoughts out in the direction of Buzacott,
and there was no lack of helpers at his shearing-
party.
It was not the custom in those parts to hire men
to shear. The farmers and the farmers' sons, with
perhajis a few of the best farm men, all exchanged
their services on such occasions.
This year old Farmer Butter's illness and death
had thrown things behind, and every other shearing
was out of hand before the new master of Bazacott
could fix his day. And partly out of good feeling
and sympathy, and partly because they were at
leisure, and partly encouraged by mothers and sis-
ters to be neighbourly to a good hardworking young
fellow, who had got behindhand, there was no lack
of offers of assistance when the day for the shearing
BAHKABAS BUTTER. 99
■was at last named. The woraenkind, too, sliowed
au alacrity in washing up and mending the oft-used
shearing suits "which was a little unusual. These
suits, they often said, " took a deal of wa.shing."
White, pui'e white, were the jackets and trousers
of " duck " which they donned of a morning, and
anything but white when they took them off before
supper in the evening. For sheep and lambs, though
they stand as emblems of innocence and purity in
the abstract, are in the conci^ete, especially of a hot
summer day, extremely dirty and greasy beasts.
Let's take a look at the big kitchen where the
shearers are assembling about eight o'clock in the
moniing. One by one the neighbours drop in —
neighbours reckon ten miles round — some on foot,
some on horses, which they turn out on to the green
after hanging saddle and bridle on one of the many
crooks and nails that stud the outside walls of the
farm kitchen. All are dressed in their Sunday
clothes, and carry the shearing suits rolled and
strapped over the shoulder.
One by one Farmer Butter greets them heartily,
and bids them set to at the fried potatoes and cold
ham. They then slip upstairs to change their broad
cloth for linen clothes, and off to the barn, where
Joe and Jack are already bringing in the sheep.
What a noise, what a skurry, what a bleating of
sheep, and barking of dogs, and shouting of men !
Each man brings his own shears, and chooses his
own corner in the barn, and soon twenty pairs of
shears are busy on a score of beasts, who, their first
unavailing struggles over, resign themselves to their
fate like — well ! like lambs.
The younger men think much of time, and there
is a sort of unacknowledged racing between them.
100 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
Five sheep an hour is reckoned pretty fair work,
though some will turn off six. Tlie older men
don't appi'ove of sucli rapid dealing. " Do it pro-
per, lads, do it proper ; jou'm bound to punish the
poor beasts if you hurry 'era like that. I can't
abear to see the poor critters nicked and bleeding.
They'd ruther lie still a little longer, and keep a
whole skin to their backs."
But when did youth and age ever agree ? Young
blood is hot and emulous. Middle-aged men may
talk and take time; but laughter and striving, and
an utter disregard of everything except the disgrace
of being beaten by " another chap," was ever, as it
is now, the characteristic of youth. And just out-
side the barn door stood old Dick Comer (the father
of Chi'istopher to Little Comfort), with his bucket
of tar to anoint the nicks and notches, and so
prevent the summer sun and flies from festering
the cuts.
Shearing is hot woi-k, and Aunt Charity did not
fail to send up jugs of good home-bi^ewed beer and
cider to " wet the whistles " of the men. But they
were too busy for much drinking, and the talk and
the jokes were all good-natured. They broke off
at noon for dinner, and washed hands and faces
as they passed indoors. For, according to custom,
there were set on a bench outside a row of pails in
which lay steeping sprigs of wild flowering mint,
nothing being so successful as this herb in removing
the grease and smell from their hands. But dinner,
albeit they were hungry, could not detain them
long; and "drinkings," i.e. cakes and tea, was
brought them in the barn by some of the girls who
thought it fun to come and help the old lady bake
them in the forenoon. And when the sheep was let
BARNABAS BUTTER. 101
po, and ruslied out of the door, only to be causfht
by Dicky Comer, then one or other would seize the
opportunity to hand up cut-rounds already spread
with cream, or gingerbread, and mugs of tea ; and
the men were nothing loth to straighten, their backs
and stretch their legs, for three minutes, before
they cried once more, " Sheep ho ! "
But supper was the event of the day. About
eight o'clock the press began to slacken, no more
victims were caught ; one hy one the men. left the
barn, and by nine all were washed and dressed and
seated round the big hall table. Those who came
down first, slipped in behind the long oaken table
which stretched down one side of the room, and
seated themselves on the bench fixed to the wall.
Those who came last, were accommodated with
chairs, and ranged themselves on the opposite side.
Farmer Butter sat at the top, with his ba(;k to the
window, and its bx-oad sill served as his seat of
honour, heightened as it was with a thick patch-
work cushion. Here he carv^ed the round of boiled
beef which was the piece de resistance, while " squab
pie " stood further down — not one, not two, but
several.
But Aunt Charity sat at the bottom, where she
was near the kitchen, and could glance over her
shoulder to see Avhat the maidens were about,
through the open door. And it was she who ladled
out the plates of junket and cream when the meat
was removed, and the big jug of strong shearing
ale, brewed last Fall, and half a new cheese wei-e
set before the master.
It was a quiet supper to-night, for all were
mindful of the " old maister,'' so lately gone from
amongst them. But still, life has to be lived, and
102 DEVONSIIIUE IDYLS.
the 3'onng step in as the old fall out of the ranks.
The tall old-fashioned glasses wei^e served round,
each with a barlej-ear and a droop of hops eng-raved
on the brim. I have four of them now, and when
I fill them with delicate flowers, and place them on
my parlour shelf, I think on the past with a smile
and a sigh. Each man tilled for himself as the big
■jug made its circuit.
'• Here's to your good health, Farmer Butter,"
said the oldest man present, rising to his feet as
well as he could for stiffness, and speaking for the
rest of the company by right of his years. " And
us wish 'ee well, that us do, and good luck wi' the
land and the stock ; and the Lord send 'ee a good
missus, and a house full of little 'uns." The rest
of the company rattled their knife-handles on the
table by way of assent, and nodded to Barnabas as
they swallowed their ale at a gulp. But the old
Devon race is always mindful of manners, and it
was commonly understood that much joking would
not be seemly in a house so lately a house of mourn-
ing. So, when Farmer Butter thanked them briefly
for their help and good wishes, the jug made its
second round in silence.
Still, as they wended home, some this way, and
some that, under the soft summer sky, scarcely
free from the lingering crimson of sunset though it
was close on eleven, there was many a joke cracked,
and many a surmise ventured as to the future
mistress of Buzacott.
" He's bound to get married, he is ; the place
can't get on at aal wi'out a missus. Aunt Charity's
a good old soul, and no mistake; but her ain't
young enough to see to all that business — four
hundred and odd acres, and so much of it grass
BARNABAS BUTTER. 103
land. Fifteen cows they'm milking now, and the
meadows 'onld feed more. I wouldn't say us shan't
see a wedding in the Fall. I know who thinks a
lot of him, and that's Farmer Worth's Jemima, and
I know he's been over to Sparhanger a time or two
lately. He might do worse, ' go further and faro
worser,' as the saying runs ; for Jemima Worth's
a spiritty maid, and has got her share of good
looks."
But the Fall came, and no wedding was talked
of. Barnabas was still too busy to go a-courtiug.
When Christmas was close at hand, one grey
noon when there was nothing particular to keep
him at home, and it looked likely for snow, Farmer
Butter ordered out his horse, saw carefully to his
stirrups and bridle, and, saying nothing as to his
errand there, rode off in the direction of Bamworthy,
the market town some twelve or fourteen miles
distant.
*****
Where, all this time, w^as Miss Betty Kick ? At
home with her father and mother at Grendon par-
sonage, and helping, as a good maiden should, in
all household matters. Seventy years ago girls
did not travel about the world as they do now. If
their fathers were rich enough to keep horses and
carriages, they might go once in a Avay to visit a
friend in the same part of the country. I3ut lawn
tennis and even croquet, now so old-fashioned, were
still undreamt of. Girls played battledore and
shuttle-cock if they were in want of a little exercise.
But that was not often the case — not often, at least,
in the family of a country pai'son.
The Rev. Thomas Kick was a country parson,
and he was not rich. He was a scholar and a
104 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
gentleman, and he had three dauf^hters, to whose
future he looked forward with some anxiety. IMiss
Elizabeth, our hei-oine, was the middle one. I have
seen a picture of her, taken, perhaps, a year before
the date of my story, when she was eighteen years
old. In it she wears a white frock with short
sleeves, and a waist close under her arms. Her
brown hair is arranged in neat little curls on her
forehead. A coral necklace adorns her plump neck.
A pair of modest brown eyes look yon full in the
face. I believe it was taken in Bamworthy, Avhere
she often went to visit her mother's brother, who
had a flourishing business in that town. A clothier
he was, so I have heard, but childless ; and he and
his good wife were always glad when one of their
nieces could be spared to come and stay with them
for a week or so. It's a pretty little picture, and
it used to hang in a little black frame between the
windows in the clothier's best parlour. Does it not
seem impossible that only seventy years ago photo-
graphs were not invented? Sti'anger even than
the short waist and the brown curls. We may
Avake up any day and find these in fashion again,
but we can never return to the time when "cartes
de visite " were unknown, and "cabinets " in velvet
frames did not exist.
But girls in short-sleeved frocks and girls in
tennis suits have much in common. Outsides may
differ. The pai'lours they live in may boast any or
every style of furniture. Neat chintz or flimsy art
muslins are but the background which sets off a
maiden in her first bloom ; and the young man who
steps in, hat in hand, takes little count of acces-
sories if the face turned to greet him be the face
he seeks.
BARNABAS BUTTER. 105
Young Mr. Batter had met Miss Betty at the
market town more than once in his father's Hfe-
time. It was known that she was a favourite with
her chiklless uncle, Mr. Trufit, the clothier, and
that fair-time or feast-time often found her with
him. Mrs. Trufit, always glad of the help and
company of a niece, was especially so at such times,
when all their customers came to town for one
reason or another, and most of them gave a call
and expected to be entertained with savoury pies,
or, at the least, with cakes and ale. All the three
Miss Kicks were pleased to be invited ; but Lavinia,
the eldest, could not be so easily spared from the
parsonage, and Kitty, the youngest, had not fini.shed
her education. And the Kev. Thomas, having little
but leai'ning to give his daughters, determined they
should not want that. So it came to pass that,
at this particular Christmas, it was Betty who was
sitting in her Aunt Trufit's white parlour, when
Mr. Butter, after transacting some business with
the clothier, was invited by him to walk through
from the shop into the dwelling-house and pay
" his compliments to the ladies."
Ah, Barnabas, Barnabas Butter, Avas it for this
that you rode fifteen miles on a cold December day
— with the near prospect of a fall of snow to ride
back through — just to get a chance of seeing a prim
young girl in a grey merino frock, with rosy cheeks
and clear hazel eyes, as she sat reading aloud to her
aunt that gloomy afternoon ?
Once, two years ago, Barnabas had danced with
her at the Christmas party Mrs. Trufit always gave;
she a shy little girl, and he a still sh3-er youth.
Once again, six months later, he had met her walk-
ing in the street with a friend, and had " the honour
106 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
to inquire after her health, and that of her respected
uncle and annt ; " and when, left lonely in his house
and his work, that cry arose in his empty heart,
" Thee must take a missus, take a missus, Barnabas,"
somehow or other he always seemed to hear the
echo of those pretty phrases in which the well-bred
girl thanked him for his kind inquiries, and had the
" pleasure of informing him that all friends were as
well as usual."
What is it that makes one voice ring in our ears
for ever, one presence never fade ? We don't know.
The essence of love is too subtle for analysis. Why
did Betty's heart beat quickly, and why did she
start and drop the magazine she was reading (it
was the Imperial Magazine, just as fashionable then
as Mrtcmillan is now, though I dare say you never
heard its name), even before her uncle opened the
door, and introduced the guest ? Ah ! that is
Love's secret.
" Heine's Farmer Butter dropped in to take a dish
of tea, Mrs. Trufit," said the polite clothier, who
knew manners; and he said " tay," as was the
fashion in those days.
" Hope I don't intrude, ladies," said the equally
polite farmer. And amid all the consequent civili-
ties, and the little bustle attendant on bringing in
the tea-tray, Miss Betty recovei-ed her composure,
and was able to hand the cake and press the cran-
berry jelly as beseemed her aunt's niece. And no
one knew how her heart jumped when he said, " I'm
sartin sure it must be good if you made it, miss."
" Well said, lad ; well said ! " cried the uncle.
And "Take another cut round, Mr. Butter, do then,"
followed up the hospitable aunt ; " you'm making
use of nothinar."
BAHNABAjS butter. 107
Seventy years ago, a disli of tea and home-made
cakes were the cementing of friendship. When
Barnabas ate the cakes and jelly Miss Kick had
helped to make, it was, I think, a sort of love-feast
to him. He ate much, and said little or nothing to
her; but the tea tasted like nectar, and the jelly
was ambi'osia. And while he answered ]\Ir. Trufit's
talk, his spirit was keeping time to the old tune,
" Thee must take a missus, Barnabas Butter ; take
a missus."
Was Miss Betty going to stay over Christmas
with her aunt? at last he ventured to ask; and
might he have the honour of sending her in some
of the Golden Pippins out of his orchard ? Thei-e
was no apple so good for making jelly, he'd heard
his mother say scores of times, and he'd picked a
rare lot of 'em this Fall.
Aunt Trtifit nodded consent, and Betty blushed
prettily.
Accordingly, next market day, a big maund
basket was left at the door, with Farmer Butter's
best i-espects, and with it a letter which had cost
its writer some considerable efl^ort. It began,
" Honoured Miss," and, in a concise, if somewhat
formal style, begged her acceptance of a small
offfi'ing from his orchard ; and desired, with his
" humble duty," to know if he might be permitted
to propose a visit to her respected pai-ents with a
view to open up an acquaintance, which, "if agree-
able to both parties," might, he hoped, ripen into a
nearer relationship.
" Till then, dear miss, you favour me with your
permission to address you, under your honoured
parents' roof, I will not presume to sign myself as
anything more than your humble servant to com-
mand, "Barnabas Bo ITER."
108 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
Betty blushed again when she read this prim
epistle, which was dutifully handed to her aunt.
" Whatever your father and mother'!! say to it,
Betty, I can't tell. They'm a bit stuclc up at times.
But, for my part, I tliinlc a maiden that's got no
portion miglit go further and fare worse, if she
turned up her nose at a liicely young man, with a
good farm of liis own, and beholden to no man. If
so be he ain't exactly what you folks call a gentle-
man, he won't make the worse husband for that ;
will he, Josiah ? "
''Oil, dear aunt! I'm not thinking of husbands,"
said the modest Betty ; and — " However shall I
answer liis letter ? "
" 'Tisn't for you to answer it ; 'tisn't for you, my
maid," said Mr. Trufit. " Give it to your father
when he fetches you a-Toosday, and he 'ill say what
he's a mind to."
The Rev. Thomas did say what he had a mind
to, and his remarks were very pointed. The conse-
quence was that Mr. Barnabas Butter did not call
at Grendon parsonage — at least, not that winter.
Betty returned home, and dutifully mended her
father's socks, and read aloud to her mother in the
evening. She never alluded to the young farmer;
and her parents, after once thanking Heaven that
the would-be lover lived twelve miles off, and that
they could easily keep Betty out of his way, dis-
missed him altogether from their minds.
Not so Miss Betty. It was quite true she was
" not thinking of husbands," as she told her aunt ;
but she thought a good deal of Mr. Barnabas
Butter. What girl does not think about her first
lover ? He was a fine man, straightforward in his
ways, and good to look at. Betty had looked at
BAIiNABAS BUTTER. 109
him, and somehow that look had settled down into
tlie very bottom of her virgin little heai't. Betty
was not given to self-analysis, or many searchings
of soul. That is a modern phase of living. Betty-
lived in the beginning of the century, before such
things were the fashion ; and her searchings of heart
were only when she said her special prayers at tbe
Church's three gi'eat festivals — her special prayers
for purity and righteousness. But when she did
search her heart, she found, to her own great dismay,
that, hid away under everything, there lay the re-
membrance of Bai-nabas Butter, and that one look.
Was the young man conscious that his image lay
in this pure shrine ? Whether or not, I think
there is no better or safer place in this world for a
young man's soul to be harboured, than in the
innocent heart of a good girl. His soul, did I say P
We were talking of his image — his reflection ? But
a young man hai^dly knows that he has a soul, I
often think, till he sees it mirrored in a woman's
eyes !
Anyhow, whether he were conscious or whether
he were not, he made no sign. The spring came,
and the spring went. The chickens were hatched
out, and Aunt Charity did her best with them ;
the cows calved; the bees " played;" the hay grew ;
the cuckoo called. Nothing stood still at Buzacott
Fai'm, and least of all its new master. Shearing
feast was over, and this time Farmer Batter did
something more than say, " Thanky, neighbours,
one and all ; I'm much obliged to ye for your good
wishes." He had stood up on his legs, and cleared
his throat, and made a speech himself; and the con-
clusion of it was —
" Buzacott Farm can't get along wi'out a missus,
110 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
that's sartin ; so let as all drink to her good health,
my friends. And, please the Lord, she shall sit at
the top of the table next shearing-tide."
And all the shearers rattled their knife-handles ;
and the big jng of ale was passed round, and the
tall gliisses with the barley-ears on them filled to
the brim ; and they all cried, " Three cheers for the
mistress of Bazacott I " and tossed off the clear
brown liquor with a knowing air.
Two or three of the bolder spirits ventured to
say, " Who be her then, lad ? Won't thee tell usr" "
Bat Farmer Batter smiled strangely, and held
his peace.
Poor Aunt Charity ! This was how it had come
about. The chickens were all very well ; she could
manage them. The girl looked after the calves.
The bees swarmed dutifully when the master was
handy, and, by the help of poker and tongs and a
tattoo played on the brass warming-pan (for bees,
especially when they are playing, love a noise), were
soon attracted to settle dowix on a convenient bough
in the apple orchard, where they stayed till sunset,
and old Dicky Comer shook them into a new butt.
Aunt Charity, in spite of her seventy and odd years,
bore up under all that. Bat when the hay harvest
drew near, she lifted up her voice once more, and
this time it was with all seriousness that she spoke.
" Thee must take a missus, Barnabas ; thee niusi
take a missus. All that grass land thee've got to
mow, and all them haymakers I've got to feed : it's
too much for me, lad, too much. Haymakers are
the hungriest folks out —
' Fore-bit and Breakfast,
Rear-bit and Diuner ;
Numiuit and Crummit,
And a Bit after Su{iper ' —
BAHNABAS BUTTER. Ill
that'n ■svliat they had when my mother was a maid,
and that's what they want to-day and for ever. I
couldn't live thi'ongh another hay harvest, and so
I tell thee, lad."
Mowing-machines had not been invented in the
" twenties," you know. But old ladies are hard to
please, and perhaps, if Aunt Charity were alive now,
she would lament for the good old times when hay-
makers expected their eight meals a day, and earned
them. I have heard old folks nowadays sneer at
" them nasty machines, taking the bread out of poor
folks' mouths." Bread ! It was cake as well, let
alone gingei'bread and pies, that were cai'ried out
into the fields for " nummit and crummit " when I
was a little gii'l and used to visit at Buzacott Farm.
The long kitchen is silent now ; the meads and lanes
no longer hear the sound of the mower's scythe
or the rasping hone. The man who owns the
"machine" and two or three good horses, contracts
for the job at so much an acre, and finds his ow^n
victuals. And Farmer Butter and his missus lie
in the quiet churchyard alongside of old Aunt
Charity.
Farmer Barnabas smiled strangely, as I said,
when the neighbours rallied him about the new
missus ; but he kept his own counsel. He had
made up his mind ; and when a man has really
made up his mind, there is a good deal to be done,
and " the less said the better sped."
Ways and means are always at the call of an
earnest purpose. Hay harvest was barely over
when Barnabas took his first step on the road he
meant to travel.
Grendou village lay a little way off the high road
to Exeter, and the parish church lay a little way
112 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
out of the village. The parsonage was a good way
from either.
The church was old and grey, and it stood at the
bottom of a hill. The churchyard was planted
with rhododendrons, while a big yew tree which
stood by the lych-gate had watched over the
coming's in and eroino:s out of Grendon folk for
more than three hundred years. Close beside the
gate, on the outside, was an upping-stock, and a
linhay stood not far off, where folks who came from
a distance hitched up their rough ponies while the
bell chimed for prayer. Mostly these ponies had
side-saddles on them, and the good women who
mounted in the soft twilight after evensong each
led her steed to the upping-stock.
But one afternoon, about the middle of July,
there was a Avell-groomed horse keeping company
with the little Exmoors, and a man's saddle was on
its back. And while the Rev. Thomas Kick was
tying on his bands in the vestry with his usual neat
precision, a strange young man walked into church,
with his head well up in the air, and a sound of
determination in his footfall. The sunlight glanced
through the deep-set mossy windows. The shadow
of ferny fronds rested on the sills. The fiddler
in the gallery was tuning up ; his neighbour was
screwing his flute together, and blowing into it to
make sure nothing had got inside ; the big bassoon
was struggling up the gallery stairs, escorted by
Granfer Ward, when old Isaac, the clerk, bustled
Uong the aisle, and opened the door of a high pew
with crimson linings (where the squire sat when
'"the family " was at "the Court "), and ushered
the stranger in.
.The congregation all looked at him; but he only
BARNABAS BUTTER. 113
looked at tlie parson when he took his eyes off his
book, and appeared to be listening to the sermon
with grave attention. The parson pi-eached his
best, stirred, perhaps, by the tinconscious flattery
of a stranger's ear.
No one in the church knew who he was.
Did I say no one? That was a mistake. The
parson's second daughter knew well enough. Her
pretty round cheek flushed; but, then, it was a very
warm aftei'noon, and the Sunday school children
had claimed all her power to keep them in order
before prayer went in. The clei'k gave out the
hymn —
" Come, let us jiue our cheerful songs,
Wi' augels round the Tbroau."
Betty's voice, which generally was as clear as
a thrush's, failed her that afternoon ; but no one
noticed it, for the fiddle and flute tuned up with
unusual vigour, and the strange member of the
congregation sang out lustily. His was a " cheerful "
voice indeed ; and perhaps he may be pardoned for
a little irreverence in his thoughts, if, when he
came to the word "angels," he looked at Miss
Elizabeth for an instant. He was a very young
man, and in love, as we know. After all, is it not
a young man's duty to fall in love P
It was a good thing that the Rev. Thomas did
not know his name, and that the idea never entered
his mind that the good-looking stranger, who at-
tended his ministrations so frequently during the
next two or three months, was attracted there by
any more mundane reason than his fame as a
preacher. Before that Sunday evening in September
when, coming back from a visit to his sick clerk,
I
114 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
lie met Miss Elizabeth and her little sister w.alking
in the lane with Mr. Butter, he had had time to
swallow and digest the -sweet flattery suggested by
this frequent attendance. He took off his hat with
an air of pleasant expectation ; and " Mr. Butter,
sir," inti'oduced Elizabeth, primly, addressing her
father by this title of respect, as was usual in those
days ; and no one noticed the flutter in her voice —
Mr. Butter was too much engaged in thanking the
reverend gentleman for his " excellent discourse,"
and the worthy rector was inviting him in to see
his wife, and hoping he would favour them with
his company to supper; while Kitty pretended to
be gathering blackberries in the hedge, to hide her
laughter.
Even Avhen the company was gone, riding home
by the light of the harvest moon, it was not the
Rev. Thomas who made the discovery of the young
man's identity with his daughter's would-be suitor
of last Christmas. It was Mrs. Kick who found it
out ; but, like a wise woman, she said nothing. A
Avooer in the abstract is one thing. You count up
his income, his position, his relations, and his edu-
cation, and you decide that he is not a suitable
match for your well-beloved daughter. But a fine
young man in the flesh is quite another thing. You
see his manly bearing ; you observe the deference
he pays to you ; you remember he has a good estate
of his own ; and you know you were once young
yourself !
Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, are
among the everlasting ordinances of heaven as it
bends over earth, and encompasses its children
with type and symbol of love and of increase. And
so Ions' as earth endures to reflect back heaven's
BARNABAS BUTTER. 115
teachino', so long' will men and maidens find their
destiny and tlieii' duty in each other ! Mrs. Kick
knew all this, though she had never been to a
"ladies' college" or dabbled in political economy
and the philosophy of nations. And Mr. Darwin,
who has thrown such light on the complex questions
of natural selection, was still eating bread and but-
ter in the nursery.
In those days the parcel-post had not been in-
vented—not even the penny-post. But there were
carriers in the land — honest folk who ti'a versed the
country in all directions with waggons, " covered
in tarpaulin." Such a waggon passed to and fro
between Bamworthy and Grendon village ; and one
day, soon after this date, there came a basket neatly
packed, and in it a " green goose " and a couple of
dozen of " Quai'reners," for apple sauce. The basket
was directed in an unknown hand to Mrs. Kick, with
" best respects." The carrier could give no account
of it. A little lad had brought it to him, with a
silver sixpence, to pay for the cai-riage thereof.
The family party at the rectory ate the goose with
a good appetite on Michaelmas Day, and tried to
guess who had sent it. Miss Elizabeth blushed
and said nothing. The carrier's wife did "chores "
for Ihe parson's lady, and, somehow or other, a
letter, beginning " Honoured Miss," found its way
into Elizabeth's hand for the second time. But I
believe that the Rev. Thomas was not favoured
with a sight of this one.
Is thei'e any need to tell the whole story of the
next six months ? We all know the persistence of
growth — the power which even a trivial seed has
when spring touches its heart ; a power which will
force even stone to vield and let its lonrrinc: out to
116 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
reacli the sun and air, to bud ami to lulossom. There
is a seed in the heart of man which will grow too,
and force its way tlirough circumstances as untoward
to its development as rock is to burgeoning plant.
Tliat seed is love ; and Barnabas Butter was not the
sort of man to be hindered in what he intended to
do bj any opposing environment. Even if Miss
Elizabeth had not cared for him, I doubt if that
would have disturbed his wooing. But he knew
she did, and so he snapped his fingers at all else.
How did he know it? Ah, well ; there are ways
and means sacred to lovers ! Much can be said in
the politest of handshakes, even in paternal pi-e-
sence. And the lifting of an eyelid means more
than whole quires of closely written note-paper.
The Rev. Thomas groaned, and the wife of his
bosom sighed. But, after all, what had he to leave
his daughters when Death should come to reckon
with him ? " After all," said they, " to have one
well provided for, it is worth winking at something."
It should be taken into consideration.
"Do you know, Elizabeth, that you will have to
work hard if you marry this man ?" said her father.
" Thank Heaven, I've the use of my hands, sir,"
replied his daughter.
" Can you milk a cow and make butter, child, do
you think ? " queried the anxious mother.
" When you and my father honour us with a visit
you shall answer that yourself, mamma."
" But, oh, Betty, he 'ill call you his 'missus ' ! "
cried Miss Kick, the elder.
" And that's just what I shall be," returned the
honest gix'l.
And so, one fine day in Whitsuntide, Farmer
Butter fetched his bride home.
BARNABAS BUTTER. 117
Nowadays a parson's daughter must be figged
ont as smart as a grand lady when she weds ; and
the carriage that takes her to the nearest railway
station must have white horses. Miss Betty chose
her wedding-gown with regai'd to use, and a blue
mousseline de laine, with a black silk spencer, was
her Sunday dress for several summers after. And
when she stepped daintily on the upping-stock by
the rectory gate, it was that she might seat herself
in the " taxed cart," by the side of her husband,
who (looking grand in a new bottle-green swallow-
tailed coat with bright bi-ass buttons, knee-breeches,
and a buff jean waistcoat) was to drive her home.
Home ! Was that home — the big grey farmhouse
that she saw shimmering in the distance, as the sun
sloped towards the west? All the home she had
ever known till now was the white parsonage on
the hill — white and straight like a Dutch cottage.
A new home! The words seem to contradict them-
selves.
Betty sat very still, with her hands folded under
her duffle cloak, as the cart jolted down over the
stony water- worn lane towards Buzacott. Farmer
Barnabas had enough to do with his horse and the
gates, to say nothing of the big stones and frequent
ruts ; but he did notice that his bride looked ]iale
and timid, and, Avhen he pulled up at his own gate
and Dicky ran oat to take the horse, he lifted her
right out of the cart with his strong arms, and set
her down on the other side of the threshold.
" Welcome home to the new missus ! " said he w^ith
a loud cheerful voice, while an honest kiss on her
pale cheeks brought back the colour to them. And
when Aunt Charity got out to the lobby — the girl
behind her bearing a candle lifted hieh — lo ! there
118 DEVONSinUE IDYLS.
stood a rosy smiling bride, holding her husband's
liand.
" Glad to see thee, child ; glad to see thee," said
the old lady to the young one; "the place wants
a missus, sure enough."
" And please Heaven it shall have one ! " answered
young Mrs. Batter.
*****
I knew Mrs. Butter many years after, when she
Avas no longer young, and many is the tale she has
told me of her first experiences as mistress of Buza-
cott Farm. She thought she knew a great deal
before she went there, but soon found there was
plenty more to learn.
Old Aunt Charity took to her bed before the
year was out, and she never left it again till ten
months afterwards, when they carried her over the
threshold : the same threshold over which Betty
had been lifted for luck, saw Aunt Charity borne out
in sorrow ; and Betty was left to face the work of
a farm alone. But she had a brave little spirit, and
a true heart. She saw to the scalding of the milk-
pans, and she made the butter. She Avatched over
the baling out of the chicken, and had an eye to
the tending of the calves. She looked well after
the "pig-meat," and rose early to cream her milk
set overnight. Saturdays she baked ; Spring and
Fall she brewed. She planted her garden with
sweet clove-pinks, and trained blush roses over
the porch. The bees worked with a good will, and
a glass of nietheglin was never wanting if you
dropped in to supper of a cold evening. She plied
her needle busily, sitting in her neat parlour on
sunny summer afternoons ; and spun yarn for her
husband's stockings in the autumn dimpses. And
BARNABAS BUTTFJi. 119
those lonp;' grey stockings, which Farmer Euttcr
wore year in and year out, could have told many
a tale of winter nights, of the clicking of busy
needles, and the sound of baby laughter, as father
played with the little ones and mother knitted by
the crackling logs in the big kitchen.
Anxieties crop up everywhere in this world's
trouble-ploughed soil. Seasons are uncertain. Bul-
locks go down in price when you've a large stock ;
and AYOol rises when you've but a poor shearing.
A farmer's life means adding little to little ; and
his wife must count her guineas often and carefully
before she can spend one. But it's a life close in
touch with Nature— Nature, the mother of us all ;
Nature, who soothes her children with the old, old
tales beloved in all lands and in all times. Spring-
time and summer, seed-time and hai'vest; the
mother hen with her sheltering wing, the wander-
ing lamb, the untamed colt, the brook by the way-
side, — Betty had learned from her earliest days, by
her father's knee, how all these things were para-
bles ; and now these parables were part of her daily
reading, and the old life burgeoned out into the
new.
Farmer Worth's Jemima had tossed her head
when first she heai'd of Mrs. Barnabas, and reckoned
that the " parson's daughter would make but a poor
figure as farmer's wife."
" What can her know about salting pork and
spinning wool ? " she cried. " It's much if her man
don't go barefoot and leery ! "
But as Betty never knew what she said, she bore
no grudge for it. And by-and-by the mistress of
Buzacott knew how to let folks see there was no
lack of good housekeeping under her rule. Farmer
120 DEVONSHIRE IDYLS.
Batter took pride in hearing folks compliment Tier
cakes and elderbeiry wine ; and in knowing that,
bring whom he might to the old house, morning,
noon, or night, there was never lacking a bright
hearth and a fitting meal.
" This is not a yerj romantic story," says my
reader. Perhaps not ; perhaps romance fits in
better with broken vows and parted lovers. Per-
haps it has nothing to do with faithful married
love and daily household duties. Still, for my
part, I like better to think of Mr. and Mrs. Barnabas
as enjoying comfortable middle life in one another's
society, than I should ever do if they had filled two
early graves apart — however romantic it might
have sounded to tell of cruel fortune and broken
hearts. Is it true we are sent here to grow our
souls, and work out our salvation ? And can we
not do this in peace, and amongst kind friends 'r'
For me, and I hope for many, time's bright flowers
and eternity's harvest grow best "at home."
That summer — the summer Miss Betty became
Mrs. Barnabas — there was a fine shearing up in
the old barn. I've heard that there counted five
and twenty shears at woi-k ; and Farmer Butter often
told with pride how, in the country dance which
followed supper, there was twenty couple footing it
in " Sir Roger de Coverley," and more when they
stood up for the old-fashioned " wheel-dance," which
every one knew. Farmer Bale was there, and he
led off with the bride by vii'tue of his being the
largest holder of land present ; and Farmer Worth's
Jemima, in a green muslin with pink roses on it,
followed close after with the bridegroom. She was
a " spiritty maid," as the neighbours said, but she
was good-hearted too ; and, in the pleasure of the
BAL'NABAS BUTTER. 121
dance, she forgot all grudge against the woman
who had stepped into the shoes she once hoped to
Avear.
The time-worn planches creaked and shook ; the
laughter and jokes rang across the yard; and Aunt
Charity, as she filled out the broth for the men's
supper, was heard to say more than once —
" I'm right down glad Barnabas has got a missus,
that I be.''
It was two o'clock and past when the last horse
was unhitched, and the last guest rode away from
Buzacott " shearing."
And then the hay harvest came, and before the
bride had well unpacked her boxes, she was up to
her elbows in flour and cream, making cut-rounds
for the men's " drinkings," and learning all the
traditions of " nummit and crummit."
When the busy autumn came, there was the "cry-
ing of the neck," and the "harvest home." Noiv, I
doubt if one man in the parish can remember a
" crying." Old things are indeed passing away. It
was, I suppose, a remnant of some old pagan custom,
but I don't think it is Christianity which has driven
it out of the land. On the contrary, there was a
good deal of Christian practice mixed up with the old
pagan tradition of dedicating the first ears of corn
to Ceres. (If I am wrong in my mythology, no
doubt some scholar will set me to rights.) But no
matter how the custom arose, it was a pretty sight,
and a gi-eat interest to Mrs. Buttei"'s children some
few years after, as they trotted up to the fields the
first day the sickle was put in the wheat. The
first armful that fell to the ground was carefully
gathered up by old Jonas, and put aside. And in
his dinner-hour, they watched him plait it cun-
122 DEVOXSHIUE IDYLS.
ninf^lj in throe strands, to represent tlie eartb, air,
and water, and bind it tofjether in one neck.
" Mother, do 'ee let we bide up to supper," pleaded
small Barney, as spokesman for himself and his
little sister Lavinia. " Jonas says he's gwine to cry
the neck on Sou'down to-night ; and he'ill rin, and
they 'ill rin ; and oh, mammy, he says he'ill be bound
to get en in diy, spite o' Thirza and all her ways.
She shan't wet en to spile the harvest, no tino !
That's what Jonas says."
And Lavinia piped in with her little shrill voice,
" Let we bide, mammy ; do 'ee let we bide up for
supper, and eat the frumitty."
I can fancy the little ones clinging to their
m.other's skirts half terrified, and half dancing with
joy, when the sun set, and, the fall moon rising over
Long Barrow top, the whole of the reapers gatliered
in a circle round old Jonas. The men carried their
reaping-hooks, the sheaf was borne by the old man.
Bai'e-headed he stood in the light of the moon.
Strange shadows flecked the mossy sv.^ard on Sou'-
down as he held the firstf raits aloft, and waved his
ai-ms.
"We ha'un ! " cried he, and the cry was long and
wailing. The strange intonation fell on the ear
like an echo from pagan days. One could fancy
the fauns and weird beings of eld had taught the
cadence to the first reapers of earth. "We ha'un ! "
cried he : and all the men in the circle bowed to
the very ground, and their bright sickles glinted in
the dim light, and made one think involuntarily of
the end of the world and "the reapers " that " are
the angels." Not that these men were angelic at
all. It was only Joe Somers, and Bill and Watty,
whom we knew quite well ; and two or three chaps
BARNABAS BUTTER. 123
who wore fustian jackets and worked hard to get a
living for themselves and their families. Bat the
moonlight and the strange wailing cry lift one out
of the present and the familiar ; and when we lose
our footing in this every-day world, the only other
we know anything about is the world of the Bible,
and we fling ourselves all unconsciously into its
parabolic scenes.
" We ha'un ! " cried Jonas again, and again the
reapers bowed and waved. Then the old men took
up another strain, at once more jubilant and more
resonant, and, with an indescribable drawling utter-
ance, sang out, " Thae Neck ! " — sang it out three
times ; and twice the waving circle of bright steel
flashed. And Livy screamed, and hid her face in her
mother's apron. But Barney jumped with delight.
And when old Jonas held his trophy higher than
ever, and, with, one foot raised, and the left arm
poised i-eady for a dash through the ring, sang out
for the third and last time those mystic words,
" Thae Neck ! " the child could not restrain a shout
of rapture ; and as the old man charged forward, the
men and boys rushed after him, and Barney, holding
tight to his father's hand, ran too— helter-skelter
over the common, pellmell down the lane, out of
breath across the green. But not to rush in at the
front door, where the girl stood with a hidden pitcher
of water to wet the " Neck." No ; old Jonas was too
cunning for that. Past the hall door he ran ; and
while Fate, in the shape of Thirza Hooper, tore off to
the back door only to dash her pitcherf ul over Joe
Somers, who slunk in empty handed, old Jonas, with
an agility surprising to his middle life and somewhat
stiff back, jumped in through the open window of
the big kitchen, and held up his precious Neck
unwetted and in triumph.
124 VKVOySinUE IDYLS.
Tho rest troopod in after, with loud liurrnhs ; and
tljo disconititi'd Tliirzii liastt'ned totnkt' tiptliesteuin-
\n^ dishi's of fruinitty for tho mru's supper, — new
wlioiit boiled in milk, flavoured with npieo and
curnints, and eaten with huj»^e chunks of bi"own
bread. Uai-nej siit up on tlie end of the oaken table,
and dipped his spoon witli the rest. Hut Livy had
a cupful taken to her upstairs, and droppeil off to
sleep with a bunch of wheat-ears clasped tii^ht in
her rosy tist ; while her mother san;,' softly, as she
had often done in her father's church —
" Ho doth tht" f I <xl supp'y
Ou which all cnaluns live,"
ofPerinj^ tjp her " first frn its*' with a full heart-
not to Ceres or any heathen deity, but to the God
who had led her out of her father's liouse into
woman's promised land, ami made her "a joyful
mother of chihlrcn."
• • • • •
Shall we say farewell to Barnabas and Betty here
and now ? No ; their lot is not yet perfect. ** Life
takes a deal of living/' as ray hero said years ajjo ;
and there is a proverb, common to most lands, which
bids us call no man happy till his death.
Tho seasons came, and tho seasons went. The
children grt5W up — not only Bainey and Lavinia,
but three or four more: all dilTerent, all precious
to their mother's heart, and "favonrinK^" their
father in their sturdy sense and resolute will. By
them and with them, FaJ'mer liutter and his wife
tasted most of the sweets and some of the bitters of
mairied life. The younc^ biids will not stay in the
parent nest ; their wings gix)w strong, and away
they fly.
BAIiXABAS BUTTER. 125
Lavinia married a young lawyer in Bam worthy,
who soon after moved to London, and passed out of
the home life except for a letter or two each year.
When you had to pay thirteen-pence halfpenny for
a letter, you did not write once a week. Barney
found his home and his fortune in Tasmania. One
little grave Avas dug by the side of old Aunt
Charity's, in the chui-chyard on the hill; and the
three others went their several ways in the woild,
and finally ^Ir. and Mrs. Butter were left alone.
Before these last times, I was often at Buzacott ;
the youngfst girl and I wex"e of an age, and school-
friends. Now she lives in France, having married
an agent for some large wine-meichants, and her
little ones have never seen the old home.
The last time I was there was not so very many
years ago. Farmer Butter and his wife sat alone in
her little parlour, and held each other's hands as
they went down the hill of age together. His head
was white, and lier brown curls were smoothed
away under a neat lace cap.
" Come once more to see the old folks, then, my
dear ? " said she.
'• And glad to see thee, glad to see thee," chimed
in Ml'. Butter.
So I stayed with them a bright long week, and
gathered blackberries in the lane where Susie and
I had gathered them j^ears ago. Then it was tliat
Mrs. Butter gave me one of old Aunt Charity's
flowered aprons as a keepsake. Indian muslin it is,
covered with delicate sprays of embroidery.
I think the days must have had moi'e hours
in them a century ago. What woman nowadays
could find time to set all those fine stitches, even
thouf'h so much of the household needlework is
1^0 DEVONSninK WYLS.
taken off herli.ands by tlio all-powerful " inacliinc"?
Sevving-macliincs and knitting-raacliincs ; sweeping-
machines, wasliing-niaehincs, niangling-maeliines ;
cream-separators and cliurns that make butter by
themselves,^— one might almost think there was
nothing left for a woman to do ! High schools and,
Board schools take her children out of her hand
for a price, or even for nothing at all, and turn
them out on one pattern. Old things ai-e indeed
]iassiiig away ! IJut are all things becoming new ?
Nay, 1 sometimes think they are dying, or dead.
When I said "g(jod-bye " to Mr. and ^Irs. Butter,
I did not know it was for the last time. 1 was to
go in to Bamworthy by the evening coach, and they
■walked with mo up the lane and out on the hill to
meet it. I see them still in memoi-y, as I saw them
then, standing hand in hand with the light of the
setting snn on their faces.
*'Ah, Betty," said the old man, "wo never
thought to see such a sight — a coach and four
horses rattling down over that there steep ! Do
thee mind the ruts, and the big stones, and the
shaking thee got that time as we di-ove home in the
cart the day we was wed ? "
"Nay," she said softly, "1 don't remember it at
all."
" Why, what was thee thinking of then, not to
mind that terrible bit of road ? "
"Why, I was thinking of my good man, and what
sort of a home I should make for him. As for the
road, I didn't give it a thought : it was the road
home, and thee sat by me."
The road home ! That was Mrs. Barnabas all
over: there spoke the missus, mindful of but one'
thing — her duty.
BARNABAS BUTTEli. 127
They did not live to see another blackberry
gathering. Farmer Butter survived her just long
enough to oi-der the stone to be put up to his wife's
memoi'y, and to choose the text which followed her
name.
ELIZABETH,
WIFE OF
BARNABAS BUTTER,
OF BUZACOTT, IN THIS PARISH,
AND DAUGHTER OF THE
REV. THOMAS KICK,
LATE RECTOR OF GRENDOX.
Born Jan. the 10th, 1802 ; died March the loth, 1876
" He that getteth a wife, getteth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of
the Lord."
But before the stone was set up, the stonemason
had to cut in another name below.
* * * * *
Old times are indeed gone. The commons are
enclosed and the heather i-ooted up. Sou'down echoes
no more to the cry of the plover or the burr of the
night-jar. " Harvest Home" is gone, as well as
the reapers who " cryed the Neck." Ruts are filled
up in the lanes, and instead of creaking cart-wheels
the rush of the steam-engine and the shriek of the
steam-whistle sound through vale and over hill.
Smart villas ci-op up on the sides of the stream.
Farmers' daughters play the piano. The cream and
poultry go oif by parcel-post to London. And
farmers close their bank-books with a sigh, and tell
us that "the times are bad."
And I must say that I agree with them.
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