But to return to my subject, from which I have been wandering for the pleasure of putting in the old gentleman’s letter. The Parson in our walks set me thinking about fifty subjects which I never cared about before, because I could see that he was himself deeply interested in them, and really believed whatever he said to me. We used to get home by about twelve o’clock, and then I would go away by myself, and think over what we had been talking about till dinner. And, after dinner, Miss Lucy, and sometimes Joe, would come out and walk with us till tea. Sometimes we went to the village school, and I sat at the door and heard them teaching; and as long as Mr. Warton was with us it was all right, but afterwards, when he had gone, I could see that the schoolmistress, a young woman of about thirty, sallow-faced and rather prudish, used to look at me as if I had no business there.
When he left, Mr. Warton gave me a kind invitation to go and see him in town, and added he had no doubt I should come, for he could see I should soon want some such work as he could give me to do.
After he was gone I tumbled fairly head over heels into the net in which I suppose every man “as is a man” (as old Seeley would say) gets enmeshed once in his life. I found it was no use to struggle any longer, and gave myself up to the stream, with all sails set. Now there is no easier thing than going down stream somehow, when wind and tide are with you; but to steer so as to make the most of wind and tide, isn’t so easy—at least I didn’t find it so.
For as often as not, I think, I did the wrong thing, and provoked, instead of pleasing her. I used to get up every morning before six, to be ready to wish her good morning as she went out to the dairy; but I don’t think she half liked it, for she was generally in a very old gown tucked through her pocket holes, and pattens. Then after breakfast I used to hanker round the kitchen, or still-room, or wherever she might happen to be, like a Harry-long-legs round a candle. And again in the afternoon I never could keep away, but was at her side in the garden, or on her walks; in fact, to get rid of me, she had fairly to go up to her room.
But I couldn’t help myself; I felt that, come what might, I must be near her while I could; and on the whole, I think she was pleased, and didn’t at all dislike seeing me reduced to this pitiful state.
When I was involuntarily out of her sight, I used to have a sort of craving for poetry and often wished that I had spent a little more time over such matters. I got Joe to lend me the key of the cupboard where he kept his library, hoping to find something to suit me there. But, besides a few old folios of divinity and travel, and some cookery books, and the Farmer’s Magazine, there was nothing but Watts’s Hymns and Pollock’s Course of Time, which I didn’t find of any use to me.
Joe used to wonder at me at first, when I refused his offers of a day’s coursing, or a ride with him to Farringdon or Didcot markets; but he soon got used to it, and put it down to my cockney bringing up, and congratulated himself that, at any rate, I was pretty good company over a pipe in the kitchen.
The autumn days sped away all too quickly, but I made the most of them as they passed, and over and over again I wondered whether there were any but kind and hospitable and amusing people in the Vale, for the longer I stayed there, the more I was astonished at the kind courtesy of everybody I came across, from the highest to the lowest, and I suppose everybody else would find it the same as I did.
It seemed as if I were destined to leave Elm Close without a single unkind thought of any body I had seen while there, for even Jack made his peace with me. Only two days before my departure, Miss Lucy gave out at breakfast that she was going to walk over to see her uncle, and wanted to know if her mother or Joe had any message. No, they hadn’t. But of course I managed to accompany her.
When we came to her uncle’s farm, he was out, and in five minutes Miss Lucy was away with her dear friend and cousin, one of the girls I had seen at the pastime, and I was left to the tender mercies of Jack. However, Jack at his own house, with no women by to encourage him to make a fool of himself, was a very decent fellow. He walked me about the homestead, and chatted away about the pastime, and the accomplishments of his terrier dog, whom he had got from the kennel of the Berkshire hounds, and whose father used to run with them regularly. Then he began to inquire about me in a patronizing way; how I came to know Joe, what I was, and where I lived. And when he had satisfied his curiosity about me, he took to talking about his cousins. Joe, I soon found out, was his hero; and he looked forward to the time when he should be able to breed a good horse, like Joe’s chestnut, and to go about to all the markets and carry his head as high as any one, as Joe could, as the height of human happiness. As to cousin Lu, if he were looking out for any thing of the sort, there was no girl within twenty miles that he knew of to whom she couldn’t give a stone over any country. But she wasn’t likely to marry any of the young men about; she was too full of fun, and laughed at them too much. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised now, if she was to take to some town chap like you, after all’s said and done,” said Jack, in conclusion, as we returned to the house.