CHAPTER IV.
THE WOODBURNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS.
Amongst the families which called on the Degges was that of Mr. Leonard Woodburn, of Woodburn Grange. The Woodburns did not belong to the so-called great families of the county, but to those of smaller but independent estate, whose heads were formerly classed under the name of yeomen. Mr. Woodburn was the possessor of about four hundred acres of freehold land, beautifully situated about a mile beyond Rockville, in the vicinity of the Trent, and beautifully cultivated. The house was one of those old Elizabethan ones with a variety of projections, pointed gables, and mullioned windows. The chimneys were of the cross-banded and ornamented kind which are now regarded as extremely beautiful, and, indeed, they had been thought so a good while ago, for the father of Sir Thomas Tenterhook, when rebuilding Tenterhook Hall, had asked the father of the present Mr. Woodburn if he had any objection to sell them. A proposal, which Mr. Woodburn had with true yeoman feeling of independence, regarded as so great an insult, that he turned his back on the baronet as he sat at his gate on horseback, and in presence of his groom, and closing the gate pretty sharply, walked into the house without deigning a reply.
The present Mr. Woodburn, who had been the only son, was a man of a liberal education, fond of classical literature, and more deeply learned in all the history, both general and family, of the county, than any other man in it. Nay, there was scarcely a family of any note in England of which he did not possess a knowledge which continually surprised you. He had a real love for topography and family history, which had led him, as it would seem, insensibly to acquire not only this knowledge of domestic annals, but of the titles of almost all the estates in the county, many copies of which, curious and important in their way, he possessed; and this knowledge made him a great authority in cases of disputed title, and had led him to decide the issue of several most noted trials. He had a habit also of noting down all sorts of curious facts which came to his knowledge either in the course of his reading of books, or of the newspapers, or which he heard verbally. These curiosa had accumulated into several volumes, which he kept locked up in his desk, and which he would bring out occasionally as something of public interest was occurring, or as something in conversation had suggested the reference. A somewhat odd medley a stranger would have regarded the contents of these volumes, for amongst public and important facts, would be found jotted down birth-days, dates of weddings, and funerals of his family or neighbours; and even remarkable cases of prolificness of fowls, cattle, and fruit-trees on his farm. There was an entry of the turkey, or the hen that had laid away in the copse or the thicket, and came forth unexpectedly with some fifteen or twenty pouts, or chickens. The tame hawk, which was reared by George, his son, and suddenly flying away, became not only wild, but the scourge of his poultry-yard, by making continual visits to it, till at length shot, stands in immediate succession to the history of the lawyer of the neighbouring town, who, reared at the cost of the clergyman of Cotmanhaye, whose shoeblack and errand boy he had originally been, had grown rich by harassing the poor people of the country round by all sorts of vexatious suits.
Mr. Woodburn was a quiet gentleman, of somewhat above the middle stature, now approaching fifty. He would not at that time of day have been addressed by letter as esquire, though every man who is not exactly a sweep or a costermonger is so now. He would be written down, however, Leonard Woodburn of Woodburn, gent., in any public document, or county summons on judicial service. Mr. Woodburn might be seen daily riding on a good sturdy horse about his farm, and in harvest time he did not hesitate to take a hand at raking or forking in the hay-field, or binding after his reapers in the corn-field; and on such occasions his children would turn out for a frolic, rather than for serious work. His harvest done, Leonard Woodburn shot over his own land, accompanied by his son George, now just come of age, and who was treading in his father’s steps, being fond of both agricultural pursuits and of the gun.
Mrs. Woodburn was a fine, large, comely woman, who, though as well educated as the ladies generally of her day, and fond of hearing books read in winters’ evenings rather than reading them herself, had her heart and pride in her house and her dairy. Churning, cheese-making, looking after her fowls, her eggs, her calves, and pigs, and pigeons, her ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea-fowls, her fruit both of garden and orchard, storing it up, or preserving it; these were the great business of her daily life, and afforded her a perpetual satisfaction. It was a real delight to see Mrs. Woodburn amid her daily duties of this kind, with her handsome, sunny, smiling face, and tall and ample but active figure, directing her maids, or helping even in an emergency, or, to instruct a novice, kneeling on a soft bass, leaning over the side of the large brass pan, with her fair, full, and finely rounded arms bared to near the shoulder, crushing down the curd in the whey, or crumbling it and pressing it into the vat. Or you might see her surrounded by a large flock of glossy pigeons in the farm-yard, who had descended from their tower surmounting one of the buildings to receive her daily bounty. Not that Mrs. Woodburn deemed it her express duty to feed any of the farm-yard creatures; that belonged to the men-folk, who not only foddered horses and cows, but fed pigs and poultry, and the pigeons came down quickly and put in for their share with the numerous and scuffling family of ducks, geese, turkeys, and all the rest of them.
It was the custom of farm-houses, and the custom reigned at Woodburn Grange, for the mistress of the house to receive the profits on pigs, calves and poultry, with all their eggs, feathers, or other appurtenances. These were her perquisites, with the butter, in most cases, to furnish her wardrobe and for spending money. It was, therefore, natural that the farmer’s wife should keep a patronising eye on the creatures within her province, and Mrs. Woodburn thus frequently made her visit to the farm-yard; saw whether the pigs were well fed and bedded, and that all the feathered flocks in the yard, or in the paddock, or on the pond were prosperous. The dairymaid fed the calves till they were ready for the butcher, or to be turned out into the orchard, where they at first galloped with cocked tails, to and fro, with a frantic velocity that made it marvellous that they did not crack their silly, but joyful skulls against the trees. For some time after their liberation from the calf-house to daylight and freedom, they were the dairymaid’s care, and Mrs. Woodburn taking her rambles through the ample kitchen-garden, could stand and survey the infant herd with professional and a sort of motherly satisfaction.
Besides their son George, the Woodburns had two daughters, the elder one, who was really the oldest of the three children, was the sedate, but kindly Ann. Ann at this epoch was four or five-and-twenty: of middle stature, an extremely neat figure; of a very sweet, serious countenance. Quiet, thoughtful, very prudent in her disposition, but with warm and deep, but not demonstrative feelings. Ann loved music, and played well on the piano, on which she was frequently called to charm away the evening hours when the family was assembled. She was fond of reading, but not of a very wide range of literature. She had her favourite books of poetry and piety in her own room, and had the strongest attachment to certain authors. They were those who touched her heart rather than excited her imagination, and their thoughts and sentiments were familiar to her mind as her own thoughts. In the light literature of the day she took comparatively little interest, though she was ever ready to read to her mother what she liked. Ann devoted herself to the cares of the house, but not of the farm. She saw that the meals were all duly prepared and served: saw that all the rooms were kept in nicest order; helped often to make a pudding or a pie, and took care, if guests were expected, that all was in order to receive and entertain them. Besides these duties, Ann loved the garden, rejoiced in tending the flowers, and looking after the bees, which had a large shed, and occupied several shelves in it with their hives towards the lower and sunniest corner of the garden. Such was Ann, quiet, cheerful, loving, and busy, but never bustling. Every one relied much on her clear, good sense and loving interest in them: every one consulted her in their difficulties, and received from her almost invariably, the very wisest counsels. Mr. Woodburn said Ann was like many other still waters, she was deep, and his familiar name for her was, “Old Sobersides.”
The last of the flock was the lively, laughing Letitia, seldom called anything but Letty. Sweet Letty was about seventeen; with all the vivacity, and eager frank life of a schoolgirl. In fact, she was that till the other day. Now, she was the sunshine, the flying, quivering sunshine called Jack-a-dandy, sent by reflection from a basin of water over walls and ceilings in blithest dance. Letty, like the Jack-a-dandy, was here and there, in the house, in the garden, full of joy and love of all things around her; with a face more charming than beautiful, all smiles and frolic, Letty was ready to lend a helping hand to her mother or sister; full of talk and question, making every one glad with her own gladness, and ready to take a stroll or a ride with her father or George, and to astonish them with the frank, open, genuine expressions of her young and innocent heart. Everything they told her of the people or the things amid which they lived interested her, and any relation of cruel or unkind treatment of any one, fetched up the colour of a most lovely roseate indignation to her young, pure cheek, and the warmest expressions of it to her tongue. Such was blithe Letty—simple, yet shrewd, loving and light-hearted, the happy embodiment of ardent and out-blossoming womanhood.
But Woodburn Grange was a spot made for a happy home, for substantial ease and abundance, not for grandeur. There was everything there which enabled its possessors to enjoy the country. A handsome income; all the rural luxuries of life; horses, an open, but not a close carriage, a boat on the charming river below, hearts ready to love good and intelligent neighbours, and such neighbours to love.
The old house stood in its ample gardens. A low brick wall, surmounted by a hedge of roses fenced it in from the road, which ran by from the village to Cotmanhaye, and further up the valley. A straight walk led up to the handsome, ample porch—you could not enter the garden in a carriage, but must walk up it,—in summer, amid a glow and perfume of flowers and a murmur of bees, and a flickering dance of butterflies, that was delicious. Around and beyond the house extended the flower-garden with evergreens, and here and there a fruit-tree. Then down the slope stretched the kitchen-garden, with its tall south fruit wall, with its trellises of roses and jasmines bordering beds of raspberries and gooseberries. Its abundant growth of peas, beans, and all vegetables, its asparagus beds, strawberry beds, beds of salsify and scorzonera; its quince and medlar and filbert trees. Then, below still, stretched an old orchard, with seats here and there under its trees, some of the old trees stooping one way, some another; and at the bottom ran the Trent, in phrase of Christopher North, “one of the sincerest streams in England.”
Tolerably elevated stood the house, overlooking undulating fields, studded with cattle and sheep, or waving with corn, the patrimonial estate, and beyond them the woods of Cotmanhaye, and across the river an expanse of level meadows of some miles in width, with the ruddy walls of the village of Breton bounding them. On the other hand, southward, rose a range of sand cliffs, at the foot of which ran the highway from Rockville to Cotmanhaye, and still beyond the cliffs, and the patches of trees on their brow, rose the country to the large farming village of Hillmartin.
Leonard Woodburn, of Woodburn Grange, though styled but yeoman, had a homestead which a king might envy, and when Simon and Mrs. Degge returned the Woodburns’ call, they could not sufficiently express their delight at it, and went over the house and the cheese-chamber, with its growing display of goodly cheeses, over the farm-yard, and through garden and orchard. They were charmed with the view from the windows, which were different from their own, and no less with the kindly intelligence of the Woodburns themselves, free, simple, and at ease; and inly promised themselves much pleasure in their friendship, which they resolved to cultivate.
Before rambling farther in our discoveries in this neighbourhood, we have still a friend of ours to introduce at the Grange, and then a promenade to make through the village—at least to make a passing note of it, and say, “Here lives so-and-so, and there lives somebody else.” Our acquaintance at the Grange is only a servant, however. It is Betty Trapps, a sort of miscellany of housemaid and cook, in past days adding something of the nurse to the rest of her duties. Betty has lived with the Woodburns since she was five-and-twenty, and she is now—let me see—what? Five-and thirty? Yes—she has lived at least fifteen years at the Grange, and that makes her—upon my word!—forty! And yet Betty does not look more than five-and-thirty. She is middle-sized, middle-bulkish in body, but lithe and active. Never idle, never weary, never ill, never grumbling, but with a wit and a will of her own, and always ready to give, as she says, as good as she gets. In fact, they must be awake that venture on a jest or trick with Betty. She is the freest of free-spoken women: Mr. Woodburn, who likes a good-natured nickname, calls her “Meg Merrymouth.” She says often what she thinks—almost unmercifully; and yet Betty is full of kindness, and is knowing and shrewd. There is nobody thereabout that can see half so thoroughly through those she comes into contact with. But we shall see Betty Trapps again, for she says she means to stay at the Grange as long as there is a tile on the house, unless Master should discharge her for chaffing a little, and she does not think he will. And she has given a good many proofs that she means to keep her word, for Betty is a Methodist, and is a woman of consequence at chapel and at the class, and has had a good many offers of marriage from the brethren, some very well to do; and Betty has so far always said, “No, thank you.” Civilly, be it understood, and as secretly as possible, for she does not really, smart as she is sometimes, like to hurt any one’s feelings. But Betty is shrewdly supposed to have saved a pretty little stock of money, having lived so long in a good place, and never indulged in finery, and the brethren may not be always so easily rebuffed, for this is one of those charms which continue growing even when others fade. However, the tiles on Woodburn Grange are extremely good yet, so we shall see.
A little above Woodburn Grange, and nearer to Rockville, lies the village of Woodburn. It is not very large, and chiefly built round a spacious green, on which the young men in summer evenings enjoy their games of cricket, ninepins, bowls, and quoits. At the corner where the road enters the green from Rockville, and, of course, from Castleborough, stands the blacksmith’s shop, where frequently two or three farm-horses stand waiting to be shod; and a number of ploughs and harrows lie expecting repairs. There the sturdy smith, Job Latter, is generally found working and perspiring, and conversing with a number of village-lads and young men hanging about, whom he contrives to disperse when they incommode him, by rubbing his hot iron in his heap of sand, and thus sending a storm of burning stars in every direction, that makes a sudden scamper. Not far thence, a congregation of dilapidated carts, waggons, and disabled wheels, mark the shop of Will Spokeshave, the wainwright. In the centre of the south side of the green, rises a somewhat large old house with porch and tall gabled roof, which is the village school, frequented, more particularly in winter, by the farmers’ and labourers’ sons of the neighbourhood. This school has now for master a worthy half-Welshman, named Howell Crusoe (after his mother and father), a man noted far around as “a great scollard”—a very great, long-headed “scollard.” He has written a book to teach boys good manners, and a genuine curiosity it is in its way; and his profound acquaintance with the customs of polite society may be at once discerned by the following rules in this his “Book of Etiquette for Boys”—a work now become very rare, yet of which an odd, and it must be admitted, a very odd copy, may now and then be met with on the shelves of the bookworms of Castleborough:—“When a gentleman or lady speaks to you”—thus teaches Howell Crusoe boy-etiquette—“immediately touch your forehead with the back of your right hand; then place three fingers of the same hand between the buttons of the centre of your waistcoat, and expect the observations of your superior in an attitude of easy but respectful attention. At any remark of the respected lady or gentleman, incline your head with a graceful dignity, and scrape backward with your left foot. Whenever you are asked to sit down in company, place one leg over the other; rest your elbow on the elevated knee, repose your chin on the hand of the same arm, with two fingers extended upright between your cheek and your ear. In an attitude at once so easy and so graceful, await the wisdom which is sure to fall from beauty, learning, and experience, and hoard up the precious results for the future occasions of life, as the busy bee hoards up the honey of spring for the winter of age.”
A company of boys educated by Crusoe, or on Crusoe’s plan, seated round a room in his most approved attitude, must have been a pleasing sight!
Crusoe is the oracle of the “Grey Goose,” the public-house opposite; for he has a number of theories which he there defends against all comers, and very few comers, it may be supposed, ever go away having won any sort of advantage over the erudite Howell Crusoe.
Howell has distinguished himself in his determined onslaughts on bull-baiting, dog-fighting, badger-baiting, cock-fighting, and the like; and has been supported in these eventually successful achievements by Jasper Heritage, David Qualm, and Sylvanus Crook, persons as yet unknown to the reader, but to whom I most probably shall, by permission, very soon introduce them. Howell does not find, however, that he can altogether dispense with boy-baiting, or beating with his cane. He manages to frighten the young ones, nevertheless, by threatening to “look over their heads to the wall,” which has something awful in it to their imaginations; and he thinks, in time, cudgels may be used to drive beasts with, and boys be ruled by appealing to what Sylvanus Crook calls their “inner man.” Howell Crusoe is also secretary of both men and women’s clubs, and is much disgusted with the drunkenness displayed by these members at Whitsuntide; finds, indeed, he has a rude and uncouth generation to deal with, and makes but little progress in refining them. In a word, Howell Crusoe is an out-and-out social reformer.
Not far from the village on the Rockville-road, you see a large pair of gates, a capacious lodge with flowering plants in the windows, and under one of them a little wooden trough, very much resembling a pig-trough. It is, in fact, a trough which Sylvanus Crook, the good Quaker, who lives at this gentleman’s lodge, has set there for the refreshment of dogs, having often seen them passing with lolling tongues, and eyes anxiously cast about for water. Sylvanus soon had his first trough stolen, but this he has secured by stout iron fastenings to the wall, and he trusts that he relieves much canine discomfort. He says, indeed, that he has never had the pleasure of seeing a dog drink at it; neither has Dorothy, his wife; but he hopes they do. At least they have the opportunity.
But this lodge is but the entrance to the extensive grounds and house of Jasper Heritage, the wealthy Quaker banker of Castleborough. Enter; advance up the well-kept carriage-drive, and very soon you will see standing on an open, level, extensive lawn, a very large square brick house. It is one of the country houses so frequently seen, which are built at no expense of architecture whatever. It is as simple and as exactly square as any box or square block of stone that you can see anywhere. Take a good, big deal box, chalk on it a door in the centre, and two or three rows of windows, and a parapet-wall at the top, showing no roof, and then you have the exact representation of some hundreds, or, indeed, thousands of houses which raise themselves as proudly on the soil of England, as if they boasted all the architectural graces ever displayed. And truly they are houses capable of lodging and entertaining a great number of people in the perfection of comfort. They are ample, convenient, and opulent abodes of opulent families, though they look so cubical and featureless outside. This house of Mr. Jasper Heritage, is, moreover, made somewhat attractive by such ornaments as the very simple taste of its owner could, or perhaps would, give it. It has an ample portico on plain Tuscan pillars; a broad flight of easy stone steps up to it; a very highly-burnished brass-knocker and bell-handle; and in a row under the windows, a range of splendid orange-trees in large square tubs, and a fountain in the centre of the lawn, which plays on particular occasions. Right and left you see broad, exquisitely rolled gravel walks going off into very tempting-looking shrubberies and gardens. Ah! it will be a great treat to penetrate in there, and see all the lawns and alleys, and gardens, ponds, and conservatories, and snug summer-houses in corners, which give you from a second storey a prospect over the country round. But we must come again some day for that. We shall get an invitation. Now it is enough to say, that in that house is not Jasper Heritage; he is just now at his bank in Castleborough, whither his coachman, Sylvanus Crook, also a Friend, and dressed in the plainest drab, with the most approved cocked-hat and knee-breeches of that society, and that day, has driven him, and will fetch him back, at four o’clock, in the handsome, roomy dark-green family carriage, without, I may add, the slightest vanity of coat-of-arms, crest, or any such badge of a worldly pride. At home, are—but not to be intruded upon by us at this moment, for they are busy cutting out a very multitude of clothes for the Dorcas Society—yes, there are Rebecca Heritage, the wealthy banker’s wife, and Millicent Heritage, the fair and only child of this wealthy banker—only think of that! What! you say, is the young lady handsome? Oh, don’t be so curious! Wait a bit. I will tell you about the mother first. Mrs. Rebecca Heritage is a lady of apparently forty-five. She is not very tall, she is not very short, she is not very thin, nor very stout; but she is fair, very fair, yet with dark hair neatly laid back from the centre of the forehead under a very white and very plain Quaker cap. A silk gown she wears—pale very dovelike silk; a white muslin handkerchief covers her shoulders and bosom, and she has extremely well-cut features. Her nose is perfect. Her eyes blue-grey, large, and thoughtful. Her forehead is broad and ample, and, in a word, she looks like a grave and comely duchess dressed up for a female Friend in a domestic theatrical. In that noble face—in that smooth, soft, yet healthy face—where no approach to a wrinkle, one thinks, would ever dare to come—there is a thought, a spirit, a fire—yes, a fire—even in the calm that rules all in that tranquil aspect. Depend upon it, Rebecca Heritage is no common woman. She is like one of those women Friends, who used to enter Whitehall, and tell the king-destroyer Cromwell or the laughing, reckless Charles II., in tones that made them still as children, of the oppression of the saints which they were perpetrating; of the foul and hideous dungeons in which they were holding those whose only crime was a religion of peace. There! if you want the picture of a mother in Israel—of a brave, self-possessed, yet loving and large-hearted woman—send for a painter, and let him pourtray Rebecca Heritage.
But I see you glancing aside from this figure of heroic piety and peace to that gentle creature at her side. Lovely, modest, retiring Millicent. So rich, and yet nature has heaped all those other riches upon her. Look at that very fair face, at those clear blue eyes, and yet shaded by such long dark eye-lashes, such finely-arched jetty eye-brows and hair. Why it is not an English, but a genuine Eastern beauty. That form and face were evidently made for an Asiatic palace, and they are here, in a Quaker house, and busy in cutting out jackets and petticoats for the squalid brats of the next town. Come away! It is too dangerous here. I must show you Still Lodge, it is just outside the grounds here. There! You see it—a genuine little wrens nest: and in it dwells David Qualm, the brother-in-law of Jasper Heritage, and Dorothy Qualm, his wife. Oh, most peaceable and peace-loving people! You will come again,—don’t linger. Remember when you inquire for the house of Jasper Heritage, it is called Fair-Manor.
One more introduction, and then enough for the present. We must now turn back, pass through the villages of Rockville and Woodburn, give a nod to pleasant Woodburn Grange as we pass, and so on a mile farther, skirting the feet of the sand-cliffs, till we stand on a fine mount with a modern-looking mansion, also of brick; they all are so round about here. This mansion is the seat of Sir Emanuel Clavering, a baronet of an old family. Finely stands the house with its large bay windows looking out on its velvet lawn, from the soft, smooth turf of which spring stately elms and ashes, with that luxury of neatness which only aristocratic trees can wear. Finely sweep the swelling slopes of the hill down to the river, which there takes a superb bend, and across it the eye runs on to distant towers, and masses of woods, and clumps of pine-clad hills high and dark. Near the house stands the picturesque parsonage, half covered with ivy, and here and there a cottage, and that is Cotmanhaye—there is no village. Opposite to the house southward, or south-west, rises a still higher range of hills, and on climbing that, you behold another landscape, vast and varied, villages, farms, and woods.
Sir Emanuel Clavering is a tall gentlemanly man of sixty. All who know him declare him a man of very pleasant manners, extremely well read; fond of poetry, but of the Pope school, which he declares to be the only polished and correct one; and given to astronomical, and it is said abstruse studies. There is a small tower at some distance on the ridge of the hill, which he uses as an observatory. In his youth he was away, no one knows where, for a space of seven years. Those who have seen him often and inspected him closely, assert that the gristle of his nose is bored, as savages bore theirs to insert a feather or a flower. Hence, there is a popular story—an imagination, for Sir Emanuel has never been known to utter a word to his most intimate friends, either of this curious fact, or of the sojourn of those years. The country people talk fluently by their firesides of Sir Emanuel in his wild youth as the head of some wild race, the lord of some dark-eyed, dark-skinned princess. They have romanced out a grand story of his leading the devoted natives to battle, with all the terrors of European arms, and winning great victories and domains for them. They account for his return by the death of his princess, a creature of wondrous beauty, and by the natural longings for one’s native land. Not a syllable of this story has a basis of ascertained fact, not the ground of a single allusion the most distant; all those years are a blank to every one but Sir Emanuel himself. Nothing more is known than that he returned to find his father dead, and his younger brother, the rector, holding the estate for him. He had neither brother nor sister besides Thomas the rector. In a few years, during which he was about a great deal in London, and from which gentlemen of his own tastes sometimes came down and shut themselves up for days with him in his tower, and were seen riding about with him, Sir Emanuel married. Not, however, one of the daughters of any of the neighbouring aristocratic families, but the daughter of the bailiff of his estate. His wife had still fewer relatives than himself, she had no brother or sister. She was a naturally fine woman, and bore her elevation with modesty and good sense. The habits of Sir Emanuel became more secluded than before. The neighbouring families rarely called on him. His life was chiefly spent in prosecuting the studies of his tower, in field sports, in fishing, and in occasional visits to the metropolis.
Such a character was sure to become the object of the most extraordinary rumours in the country round. His astronomical studies, his frequent walks at midnight to his solitary tower, followed by two large black dogs, his being seen by the keepers sometimes wrapped in his cloak, silently pacing along that bleak and elevated ridge in darkness and in the wildest tempests, was enough to add in the popular mind, to his astronomy, other and darker studies. The peasantry universally believed that he dealt in the black art; they asserted that he had been seen at the same hour in two different places thirty miles apart; they said that there was nothing lost anywhere in the neighbourhood but he would say, immediately on hearing of it, where it was, or who had got it; and that he was always right. He always told the farmers what sort of a summer or winter it would be, which was certain to take place; and he had been known on hearing of a wedding, whether in high or low life, to shake his head and say that would not be lucky, and it never was. All these things he probably pronounced from the simple sources of natural sagacity and extended knowledge, perfectly legitimate in its character; but the people far around took another and more mysterious view of it. They observed that though his brother was the clergyman, and the living belonging to the family, he rarely appeared at church; and the peasantry when they saw him felt a secret terror, though he always accosted them most kindly; was always cheerful, and even jocose, and never heard of a case of distress which he did not send to relieve.
Sir Emanuel, contrary to his wont, called on the Degges, and they returned his call, curious to make the acquaintance of a man of so peculiar a reputation. They were greatly struck with the polished friendliness of his manner, his frank cordiality, and his superior intelligence. He assured them that he had great pleasure in the prospect of cultivating their friendship. Lady Clavering had been deceased some years; he had but one son, Henry Clavering, who had been the school-fellow of George Woodburn, at Repton, and who was on terms of great friendship with all the family at Woodburn Grange.
And thus I have presented a few of the leading dramatis personæ; others are waiting in the side-scenes ready to make their appearance.