The first thing we did after getting settled (which I always like, as I haven't enough luggage to make much bother) was to walk out and see the town. I kept Dick with me, not because I wanted him, you may be sure, but because I can see he is a blot on the 'scutcheon for Sir Lionel, and I feel so guilty, having forced him into the party, that I try to attract the Blot to myself. If I mention the Blot in future, you'll know what it is. When I'm very desperate, I may just fling a drop of ink on the paper to relieve my feelings, and that will mean the same thing. The Blot puts on an air of the most exaggerated respect for Sir Lionel. You'd fancy he was talking to a centenarian. Horrid, pert little pig! (I think pigs run in their family.) I know he does it on purpose to be nasty, and make Sir Lionel feel an old stager. Do you remember the pig-baby in "Alice's Adventures"?
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Not that it need, for Sir Lionel looks about thirty-four. Nobody would give him forty unless they saw it in books; and he is like a knight of romance. There! Now you have the opinion I have come to hold of Ellaline's dragon. For me, the Dragon has turned into a Knight. But, of course, I may be mistaken. Mrs. Senter says that no girl can ever possibly understand a man, and that a man is really much more complicated than a woman, though the novelists tell you it's the other way round.
We started out, all of us, except Emily, who lies down after tea, to walk to John Halle's Hall, a most interesting banqueting room, which is now a china-shop, but was built by a rich wool-stapler (such a nice word!) in 1470, as you can see on the oak carvings. But there was so much to do on the way, that we saw the Hall, and the old George Inn—where Pepys lay "in a silk bed and had very good diet"—last of all.
The antique furniture shops were simply enthralling, and I wanted nearly everything I saw. Travelling is good for the mind, but it develops one or two of the worst passions, such as Greed of Possession. We went into several shops, and I could have purred with joy when Sir Lionel asked me to help him choose several things for Graylees, which he would have sent on there, direct. He seemed to care more for my advice than for Mrs. Senter's, and I don't think she quite liked that, for she really knows a good deal about old English furniture, whereas I know nothing—only a little about French and Italian things.
The streets of Salisbury, with their mediæval houses, look exactly as if they had been originally planned to give the most delightful effects possible when their pictures were taken. Every corner is a gem; and Sir Lionel told us that the old rectangular part of the town was planned more or less at one time. Of course, the people who did the planning had plenty of time to think it all over, before moving down from Old Sarum, which was so high and bleak they couldn't hear the priest saying mass in the cathedral, because of the wind. Fancy! Salisbury used to be called the "Venice of England"; but I must say, if one can judge now, the simile was far-fetched.
Lots of martyrs were burnt in Salisbury, it seems, when that sort of thing was in fashion, so no wonder they have to keep Bloody Queen Mary's chair in Winchester instead of Salisbury, where they've a right to feel a grudge against the wretched little, bilious bigot of a lovesick woman. Sir Lionel has several well-known martyrs on his family tree, Mrs. Norton says; and she is as proud of them as most people are of royal bar-sinisters. I never thought martyrs particularly interesting myself, though perhaps that's an uneasy jealousy, as we've none in our family that I know of—only a witch or so on father's side. Poor dears, what a pity they couldn't have waited till now to be born, when, instead of burning or drowning them, people would have paid them to tell nice things about the past and predict lovers for the future!
Witches were fascinating; but many martyrs probably marted out of sheer obstinacy, don't you think? Of course, it was different when they executed you without giving you a chance to recant, as they did with political prisoners; and do you know, they cut off poor witty Buckingham's head in Salisbury market-place? "So much for Buckingham!" Where it came off, there's an inn, now, called the Saracen's Head. I wonder if it was chopped off in the neighbourhood, too, or if it's only a pleasant fancy, to cover up the Buckingham stain in the yard? Anyhow, they tell you there that in 1838 Buckingham's skeleton was dug up under the kitchen of what used to be the Blue Boar Inn. But even that isn't as ghastly a tale as another one of Salisbury: how one of Jack Cade's "quarters" was sent to the town when he'd been executed. I should have liked to know if it's still to be seen, but I thought it would be hardly nice to ask.
We saved the cathedral for the last, and just as we were in the midst of sight-seeing there, it was time for service, so we sat down and listened to music which seemed to fall from heaven. There's nothing more glorious than music in a cathedral, is there? Usually it makes me feel good; but this time it made me feel so sinful, on account of Ellaline, and Sir Lionel and Dick, that I almost cried. Do you think, dear, that if I were in a novel they would have me for a heroine or a wicked adventuress? I hae me doots; but my one hope is, that you can't be an adventuress if you really mean well at heart, and are under twenty-two.