Next, therefore, Miss Rawlings never had to part with any of them or to search or advertise for any more.
Yet another peculiar thing was that Miss Rawlings grew more and more like a Pigtail herself. She grew younger. She laughed like a school-girl. Her face became a little narrower, even the cheek-bones seemed not to be so wide. As for her bonnets, as time “went on,” they grew up instead of broadwise. And when she sat in Church with the Thirty, in the third pew down from Mrs. Tomlington’s, you might almost have supposed she herself was a widish pigtail, just a little bit dressed up.
It is true that in the very secretest corner of her heart of hearts she was still looking for the one and only absolute little Barbara Allan of her life-long day-dream; but that is how things go. And the thought of it brought only a scarcely perceptible grave glance of hope and enquiry into her round brown eyes. But underneath—oh dear me, yes—she was almost too happy and ordinary and good-natured and homely a Miss Rawlings to be telling this story about at all.
We all die at last—just journey on—and so did Miss Rawlings. And so did the whole of the Thirty, and the matron, and the chief nurse, and Mr. Moffat, and Dr. Sheppard, and the Man with whiskers at the park gates, and the Boy who cleaned the button-boots; parlour-maids, tweeny-maids, Mrs. Tomlington and all.
And if you would like to see the Old House and the little graves, you take the first turning on the right as you leave the Parish Church on your left, and walk on until you come to a gate-post beyond the mile-stone. A path crossing the fields—sometimes of wheat, sometimes of turnips, sometimes of barley or oats or swedes—brings you to a farm in the hollow with a duck-pond, guinea-fowl roosting in the pines at evening, and a lovely old thatched barn where the fantailed doves croon in the sunshine. You then cross the yard and come to a lane beside a wood of thorn and hazel. This bears a little East, and presently after ascending the hill beyond the haystack you will see—if it is still there—The Home of all the little Barbara Allans and such like with Brown Eyes, Beaver Hats and Pigtails, Ltd.
And not very far away is a little smooth-mown patch of turf with a beautiful thatched wall round it, which Mr. Moffat consecrated himself. And there, side by side, sleep the Little Thirty, with their pigtails beside their narrow bones. And there lie the tweeny-maids, the parlour-maids, the Man with whiskers at the park gate, and the Boy who cleaned the button-boots. And there Miss Rawlings, too. And when the last trump sounds, up they will get as happy as wood-larks, and as sweet and fresh as morning mushrooms. But if you want to hear any more about that, please turn to the Poems of Mr. William Blake.
THE
PERFECT HOST
(From Lady Trenchard’s Visitor’s Book)
Sir Walter Raleigh