“But, Aunt, I can’t go and read through the Bible every time Grandmamma gives me an order.”
“You must do that first, my dear. The Bible won’t jump down your throat, that is certain. You must be ready beforehand. You will learn experience, children, as the time goes on—ay, whether you choose or no. But there are two sorts of experience—sweet and bitter: and ‘they that will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.’ Be ruled by the rudder, lassies. It is the wisest plan.”
My Aunt Kezia said more, but it does not come back to me as that does. And the next morning we said good-bye, and went out into the wide world.
I cannot profess to tell the whole of our journey. We slept the first night at Kendal—and a cold bleak journey it was, by Shap Fells—the second at Bolton, the third at Bakewell, the fourth at Leicester, the fifth at Bedford, and on the Saturday evening we reached London.
I believe Annas was very much diverted at some of my speeches during the journey. When I cried, after we had passed Bolton, and were going over a moor, that I did not know there was heather in the South, she said, “You have been a very short time in coming to the South, Cary.”
“What do you mean, Annas?” said I.
“Only that a Midland man would think we were still in the North,” said she.
“What, is this not the South?” said I. “I thought everything was South after we passed Lancaster.”
“England is a little longer than that,” said Annas, laughing. “No, Cary: we do not get into the Midlands on this side of Derby, nor into the South on this side of Bedford.”
So I had to wait until Friday before I saw the South. When I did, I thought it very flat and very woody. I could scarcely see anything for trees; only (Note 2.) there were no hills to see. And how strange the talk sounded! They seemed to speak all their u’s as if they were e’s, and their a’s the same. Annas laughed when I said that “take up the mat” sounded in the South like “teek ep the met.” It really did, to me.