“Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric; very clever people always are!” replied Miss Matey.
When Mr. Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but the two elder ladies were afraid of damp and dirt; and had only very unbecoming calashes to put over their caps; so they declined; and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take, to see after his niece. He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed into silence by his pipe—and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me, with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him; and, as some tree, or cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures struck him, he quoted poetry to himself; saying it out loud in a grand, sonorous voice, with just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We came upon an old cedar-tree, which stood at one end of the house;
“More black than ash-buds in the front of March,
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.”
“Capital term—‘layers!’ Wonderful man!” I did not know whether he was speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting “wonderful,” although I knew nothing about it; just because I was tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent.
He turned sharp round. “Ay! you may say ‘wonderful.’ Why, when I saw the review of his poems in ‘Blackwood,’ I set off within an hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the way), and ordered them. Now, what color are ash-buds in March?”
Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.
“What color are they, I say?” repeated he, vehemently.
“I am sure I don't know, sir,” said I, with the meekness of ignorance.
“I knew you didn't. No more did I—an old fool that I am! till this young man comes and tells me. ‘Black as ash-buds in March.’ And I've lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to know. Black; they are jet-black, madam.” And he went off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of.