The old gardener is nurse's father, and though he is now so old that he no longer does any work, he is maintained in comfort by the family in whose service he has spent a lifetime. Forty years of honest service in one family! No wonder he feels that his destiny is for ever linked with that of the people who have been his masters, man and boy, for forty years. He has a delightful little cottage with thatched roof and mullioned windows, and pretty vines rioting all over it, and in front of it a flower-garden full of early bloom. The lilacs which grow about so profusely are not of the color of our lilacs in America, being of a rich purple; we should not know they were lilacs but for the familiar odor.
A delicious ride back to Romsey in the twilight, carrying two of the Boyce children with us. In the evening I stroll out alone, to look at the village in the moonlight. The streets are like narrow lanes. The houses are very old, and for the most part dilapidated, but streets and houses are all as clean and neat as wax. Presently I come upon the old abbey, its rugged walls and towers looming solemnly in the moonlight, and pass the parson's house near by, all overrun with vines, thinking of Trollope again and Framley parsonage.
Before going back to the White Horse Inn I wander round the village until I find that I am lost. The discovery is not very alarming in a place so small as this, even at night. I resolve to turn every corner to the left, and see what will come of it. I presently find that getting out into the country comes of it; and having crossed a bridge and come upon a silent brickyard, and seen the long road winding away into the open country, I am reminded of Oliver Twist—or was it Pip?—running away from home and trudging off under the stars to London. Somehow, it seems this road must lead to London.
Turning about, but still walking at random and turning left-hand corners, I presently see the abbey tower again, and make for it. The street through which I pass is apparently the home of the British working man. A light burning in any house is most rare. Occasionally a man can be seen through the odd little windows, smoking a pipe by the blaze of the fire on the hearth. Here are the abbey windows, and now I know where I am. Down this narrow, winding street, across the open place where Lord Palmerston stands stonily in the moonlight, and I am at the White Horse Inn again.
At nine o'clock next morning there is a rap at the door of my room. The door being opened a man-servant is discovered, who touches his forehead (having no hat to touch) and says, "The ladies would like to 'ave you breakfast with them, sir."
He is so very respectful in his manner of saying this that he is inaudible, and being asked what he said, repeats the touching his forehead and then repeats his words.
There are no muffins at breakfast—a fact which I record merely because this is the first time since we have been in England that this peculiarly English dish has been omitted at breakfast. It appears on inquiry that muffins are a luxury of large towns. In villages they are rarely obtainable at less than about a week's notice. In fact, you can't get anything to eat, of any sort, without pretty liberal notice.
After breakfast we go to see the old abbey. It is an imposing and well-preserved pile. It was founded by Ethelwold, a thane—one of those righting, praying, thieving old rascals who lived in the tenth century, and made things lively for any one who went past their houses with money on his person. When Ethelwold had stolen an unusually large sum one day, he founded the monastery and stocked it with nuns. It was but a wooden shanty at first, but after having served till it was worm-eaten and rotting with age, it was torn down and a fine stone convent was built.
We walk about in that part of the abbey which is free from pews—by far the larger part—and stare at the monumental stones let into the floor and walls. If we did not know that Romsey had been the home of Palmerston, we should learn it now, for these stones are thickly covered with the legends of virtue in his family—wives, sisters, sons and so forth, whose remains lie "in the vault beneath." After perusing these numerous testimonials to the truly wonderful virtues of an aristocracy whom we are permitted to survive, and after dropping some shillings in the charity-box, which rather startle us by the noise they make, we pass out of the cool abbey into the hot churchyard, and read on a lonely stone which stands in a corner by the gate that here lies the dust of Mary Ann Brown, "for thirty-five years faithful servant to Mr. Appleford." Mary Ann no doubt had other virtues, but they are not recorded: this is sufficient for a servant.
An hour's ride on the velvet cushions of a railway carriage brings us, with our Paultons friends, the Boyce boys, to Southampton, which was an old town when King Canute was young. We take rooms at a pretentious marble hotel with a mansard roof, attached to the station—a railroad hotel, in fact, but strikingly unlike that institution as we know it in America. Wide halls, solid stone staircases, gorgeous coffee-room, black-coated waiters, and the inevitable buxom landlady with a regiment of blooming daughters for assistants—one presiding over the accounts, another officiating at the beer-pumps, a third to answer questions, and all very much under the influence of their back hair and other charms of person. One of them alleviates the monotony of the office duties by working at embroidery in bright worsteds.