I left Lizzie and her charge seated on the soft grass of the common, where baby, who had never before known anything so delightful, began to pluck at the crowflowers with his fat hands; and went down into the village to buy them some biscuits. I confess I felt very guilty. Going anywhere all by myself confused me, not being accustomed to it; but I was not an innocent stranger here; I was a spy in my rival’s kingdom; I was a Bolingbroke pretending to acknowledge the sway of the existing sovereign: I was going to traffic with his subjects and tamper with them. If the village authorities had found me out, and held a court-martial and hanged me on the spot, I think I should have acknowledged the justice of their decision. I was a spy.
It was a nice village—a nice, well cared-for, tidy, yet not too picturesque or unnatural village; looking as if the richer people about were friendly and sensible, not interfering too much, but keeping up a due reverence and influence. Some tall bushes of broom were actually bursting into yellow streaks over the garden palings—not wall—of a house standing back a little, which I found out to be the Rectory. It must have been very sheltered and warm, for it was still only April. However, though I was full of curiosity, my mind was not sufficiently disengaged to carry away a clear picture of the village; and when the women looked out from the doors at me with an instinct that a stranger was passing, I felt more guilty than ever. I made my way accordingly to the baker’s as fast as I could, and got some dark-complexioned ponderous buns there, which I felt sure would rouse Lizzie’s national sense of superiority to great triumph. Then I made a tremulous excuse of wanting some biscuits besides, and so got a little time to bring forward the questions I had prepared.
“Who is it that lives in the great house at the other end of the village?” said I hypocritically, pointing with my finger towards the Park.
“Who is it?” said the baker’s wife, leaning on her counter with a certain contempt and admiration of my ignorance; “law bless you, ma’am, you don’t know this place, seemingly. Them’s the Miss Mortimers, the oldest family in Cheshire. They’re as well known as the Queen about here.”
“I am a stranger,” said I hurriedly. “Are they ladies—I mean are they young ladies? were there no sons?”
The baker’s wife leaned back upon a sack of flour, and laughed. “Miss Milly’s godmoother to half the village,” she said; “she’s none that young, she’s isn’t. No, there wasn’t no son. I’ve heard my mother say there was once talk of making Miss Mortimer an ouldest son like, but it couldn’t be done. They’re cooheiresses, that’s what it’s ca’ed—I’ve seen it written down myself—cooheiresses of the late Lewis Esquire; that’s the name it goes by; and as they ain’t married it’s no harm.”
“Did they succeed their father, then?” said I.
“And that they did,” cried the woman, “and their father’s father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, as far back as I don’t know when; they’re no mushroom folks, the folks in the Park.”
I felt very much puzzled and perplexed; how could my father, then, have anything to do with it? It was very strange.
“But I suppose the lands were entailed, then, or something of that sort. Was there never another heir that claimed? I think you must be wrong,” said I, betraying myself in my wonder and haste.