“I wonder what colour it will be!” said I. “Which king?”
Ephraim makes me a low bow—over the water bottle. (Note 1.)
I must lay down my pen, for I hear a shocking smash in the kitchen. That girl Dolly is so careless! I don’t believe I shall ever have much time for writing now.
Langbeck Rectory, under the Cheviots, August the 28th, 1747.
Nearly a whole year since I writ one line!
Our lot is settled now, and we moved in here in May last. I am very thankful that the lines have fallen to me still in my dear North—I have not pleasant recollections of the South. And I fancy—but perhaps unjustly—that we Northerners have a deeper, more yearning love for our hills and dales than they have down there. We are about midway between Brocklebank and Abbotscliff, which is just where I would have chosen to be, if I could have had the choice. It is not often that God gives a man all the desires of his heart; perhaps to a woman He gives it even less often. How thankful I ought to be!
My Aunt Kezia was so good as to come with us, to help me to settle down. I should not have got things straight in twice the time if she had not been here. Sophy spent the days with Father while my Aunt Kezia was here, and just went back to the Vicarage for the night. Father is very much delighted with Sophy’s child, and calls him a bouncing boy, and a credit to the family; and Sophy thinks him the finest child that ever lived, as my Aunt Kezia saith every mother hath done since Eve.
The night before my Aunt Kezia went home, as she and I sat together,—it was not yet time for Ephraim to come in from his work in the parish, for he is one of the few parsons who do work, and do not pore over learned books or go a-hunting, and leave their parishes to take care of themselves—well, as my Aunt and I sat by the window, she said something which rather astonished me.
“Cary, I don’t know what you and Ephraim would say, but I am beginning to think we made a mistake.”