While our horse stood cropping an extempore meal, I and his driver began to talk about him and other cognate topics, including the permanent one of the great advantage to both body and soul in being freed all one's life long from the necessity of getting "something to drink" stronger than water.
A FISHERMAN'S CELLAR NEAR THE LIZARD.
"Yes," he said, "I find I can do as much upon tea or coffee as other men upon beer. I'm just as strong and as active, and can stand weather quite as well. It's a pretty hard life, winter and summer, driving all day, coming in soaked, sometimes in the middle of the night, having to turn in for an hour or two, and then turn out again. And you must look after your horse, of course, before you think of yourself. Still, I stand it well, and that without a drop of beer from years end to years end."
I congratulated and sympathised; in return for which Charles entered heart and soul into the blackberry question, pointed out where the biggest blackberries hung, and looked indeed—he was still such a young fellow!—as if he would have liked to go blackberry-hunting himself.
I put, smiling, the careless question, "Have you any little folks of your own? Are you married?"
How cautious one should be over an idle word! All of a sudden the cheerful face clouded, the mouth began to quiver, with difficulty I saw he kept back the tears. It was a version in every-day life of Longfellow's most pathetic little poem, "The Two Locks of Hair."
"My wife broke her heart after the baby, I think. It died. She went off in consumption. It's fifteen months now"—(he had evidently counted them)—"fifteen months since I have been alone. I didn't like to give up my home and my bits of things; still, when a man has to come in wet and tired to an empty house——"
He turned suddenly away and busied himself over his horse, for just that minute the two girls came running back, laughing heartily, and showing their baskets full of "the very biggest blackberries you ever saw!" I took them back into the carriage; the driver mounted his box, and drove on for some miles in total silence. As, when I had whispered that little episode to my two companions, so did we.