The Broom-Squire

by S. Baring-Gould

By the parish at large, whether that of Witley or of its subdivision Thursley, she was coldly regarded. She was but a charity girl, and kind as Mrs. Verstage was, the hostess never forgot that.

Iver was fourteen years older than Mehetabel, and, above all, was a boy, whereas Mehetabel was a waif, and only a girl.

Iver, moreover, regarded the child with gracious condescension. Had he not baptized her? Did she not owe her name to him? Had he not manufactured her first feeding-bottle?

As Mehetabel grew up, it is not surprising that she should regard Iver with admiration and affection, that she cherished every kindness he showed her, and in every way sought to deserve his notice.

The child had an affectionate, a clinging nature, and she threw the tendrils of her heart around the handsome boy, who was both patron and playmate.

It is a matter wholly immaterial whether Mehetabel underwent the ordeal of the customary childish maladies, measles, chicken-pox, whooping-cough for certainty, and scarlet fever and smallpox as possibilities, for none of them cut short the thread of her life, nor spoiled her good looks; either of which eventualities would have prevented this story proceeding beyond the sixth chapter. In the one case, there would have been no one about whom to write, in the other, had she been marked by smallpox or deafened by scarlatina, the interest of the reader could not have been claimed for her—so exacting is the reader of fiction. A heroine must be good-looking, or she will not be read about.

Indeed, it is more than probable, that had the author announced his story to be one of a very plain woman, he might have looked in vain for a publisher to undertake the issue of the story.

Before proceeding further it will be well to assure the reader that, from an early age, promise of beauty was given, and not of beauty only, but of intelligence and robust health.

Mehetabel was sent by Mrs. Verstage not only to a day school, kept by a widow, in Thursley, but also on the Lord's Day to the Vicar's Sunday-school at Witley. The Vicar was an excellent man, kindly disposed, earnest in his desire to do good, so long as the good was to be done in a novel fashion, absolutely untried. Sunday-schools were but a recent introduction, and he seized on the expedient with avidity. Hitherto the children had been catechised in Church after the second lesson in the afternoon, before their parents and the entire congregation. But as this was an usage of the past the Vicar rejected it in favor of the new system. According to the traditional custom the children had been instructed in the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. But this did not please the innovating Vicar, who cast these out of his curriculum to make way for a knowledge of the geography of Palestine, and an accurate acquaintance with the genealogies that are to be found scattered here and there in the pages of Holy Writ, The teaching of doctrine, according to the Vicar, lay at the bottom of the divisions of Christendom, but there could be no controversy over the latitude and longitude of the sites mentioned in Scripture.

The landlord, proprietor of the Ship and of Mrs. Susanna Verstage, was a dull, obstinate man, slow of thought and of speech, withal kindly. Like many another dull man, if he did a stupid thing he stuck to it; and the stupider the thing done, the greater the tenacity with which he held to the consequences. His mind was chiefly occupied with a small farm acquired out of the sand waste, hedged about, dressed and cultivated, and increasing annually in value. In this was his interest and pride; he cared nothing for the tavern, save as an adjunct to the farm. All his energies were devoted to the latter, and he allowed his wife to rule supreme in the inn. Simon Verstage was a well-to-do man. He must have managed very ill had he not made a farm answer for which he paid no rent, save an acknowledgment of 6d. an acre to the lord of the manor. He held the land on a head rent upon the lives of himself, his wife, and his son. The public-house, well frequented by wayfarers, and in good repute among the villagers, supplemented the profits made out of the farm in good years, and made up for deficit in such years as rain and deficiency in sun made bad agriculturally.