He shook his head, and looking at his daughter with watery eyes, said she needn’t be afraid that he was going to talk about that any more. He didn’t wish to trouble nobody, and if he had troubled anybody by what he said, he asked pardon, that was all.
The milk arrived, and the child producing her little basket and selecting its best fragments for her grandfather, they made a hearty meal. The furniture of the room was very homely of course—a few rough chairs and a table, a corner cupboard with their little stock of crockery and delf, a gaudy tea-tray, representing a lady in bright-red, walking out with a very blue parasol, a few common coloured scripture subjects in frames upon the wall and chimney, an old dwarf clothespress and an eight day clock, with a few bright saucepans and a kettle, comprised the whole. But everything was clean and neat, and as the child glanced round, she felt a tranquil air of comfort and content to which she had long been unaccustomed.
“How far is it to any town or village?” she asked of the husband.
“A matter of good five mile, my dear,” was the reply, “but you’re not going on tonight?”
“Yes yes, Nell,” said the old man hastily, urging her too by signs. “Further on, further on darling, further away if we walk ’till midnight.”
“There’s a good barn hard by, master,” said the man, “or there’s travellers’ lodgings, I know, at the Plow an’ Harrer. Excuse me, but you do seem a little tired, and unless you’re very anxious to get on—”
“Yes yes, we are,” returned the old man fretfully. “Further away, dear Nell, pray further away.”
“We must go on indeed,” said the child, yielding to his restless wish. “We thank you very much, but we cannot stop so soon. I’m quite ready, grandfather.”
But the woman had observed, from the young wanderer’s gait, that one of her little feet was blistered and sore, and being a woman and a mother too, she would not suffer her to go until she had washed the place and applied some simple remedy, which she did so carefully and with such a gentle hand—rough-grained and hard though it was, with work—that the child’s heart was too full to admit of her saying more than a fervent “God bless you!” nor could she look back nor trust herself to speak, until they had left the cottage some distance behind. When she turned her head, she saw that the whole family, even the old grandfather, were standing in the road watching them as they went, and so, with many waves of the hand, and cheering nods, and on one side at least not without tears, they parted company.
They trudged forward, more slowly and painfully than they had done yet, for another mile or thereabouts, when they heard the sound of wheels behind them, and looking round observed an empty cart approaching pretty briskly. The driver on coming up to them stopped his horse and looked earnestly at Nell.
“Didn’t you stop to rest at a cottage yonder?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” replied the child.
“Ah! They asked me to look out for you,” said the man. “I’m going your way. Give me your hand—jump up, master.”
This was a great relief, for they were very much fatigued and could scarcely crawl along. To them the jolting cart was a luxurious carriage, and the ride the most delicious in the world. Nell had scarcely settled herself on a little heap of straw in one corner, when she fell asleep, for the first time that day.
She was awakened by the stopping of the cart, which was about to turn up a bye lane. The driver kindly got down to help her out, and pointing to some trees at a very short distance before them, said that the town lay there, and that they had better take the path which they would see, leading through the churchyard. Accordingly, towards this spot, they directed their weary steps.
XVI
The sun was setting when they reached the wicket-gate at which the path began, and, as the rain falls upon the just and unjust alike, it shed its warm tint even upon the resting places of the dead, and bade them be of good hope for its rising on the morrow. The church was old and gray, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble men, twining for them the first wreaths they had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither and far more lasting in their kind, than some which were graven deep in stone and marble, and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly hidden for many a year, and only revealed at last to executors and mourning legatees.
The clergyman’s horse, stumbling with a dull blunt sound among the graves, was cropping the grass; at once deriving orthodox consolation from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last Sunday’s text that this was what all flesh came to; a lean ass who had sought to expound it also, without being qualified and ordained, was pricking his ears in an empty pound hard by, and looking with hungry eyes upon his priestly neighbour.
The old man and the child quitted the gravel path, and strayed among the tombs; for there the ground was soft, and easy to their tired feet. As they passed behind the church, they heard voices near at hand, and presently came on those who had spoken.
They were two men who were seated in easy attitudes upon the grass, and so busily engaged as to be at first unconscious of intruders. It was not difficult to divine that they were of a class of itinerant showmen—exhibitors of the freaks of Punch—for, perched cross-legged upon a tombstone behind them, was the figure of that hero himself, his
