a service in this regard, as in so many others; and, upon listening in vain for the sound of my mother and father below, I concluded my parents had believed me abed, and sought the out-of-doors. I might depart, then, unremarked; and so I gathered up my Leghorn straw, and threw a serviceable wool shawl about my shoulders as proof against the late September wind, and descended the stairs in all the briskness of my purpose.
In the sitting-room I encountered poor James, intent upon his task of nailing some considerable pieces of wood across the windows looking out upon Broad Street. I waited in sympathy while he grunted and heaved through his exertions. Such a flush as overspread the young man's countenance, and such beads of perspiration as shone upon his face! For he must support the wood with one hand, while hammering with the other, and the exercise was decidedly an awkward one. I considered suggesting he call for Jenny, and petition her aid; but fearful of exciting his contempt, in questioning the manliness of his strength and vigour, I stood mildly by and waited until he should have done.
“There, miss,” he said, rising to his full six feet, and easing his powerful shoulders; “that should please the missus.”
“Indeed,” I said, “as every form of kindness you exert on our behalf has done. We are indebted to you, James, for such labour freely offered, and with such good humour.”
He blushed furiously, and cast his eyes about the rug, and was made so clearly ill at ease by my praise, that I hastened to give him opportunity for diversion.
“I wonder, James, if you are acquainted with the Widow Tibbit.”
“Old Maggie?” he ejaculated, with an air of surprise. “Whatever d'you want with Maggie Tibbit?” Then, as if recollecting his place, he blushed once more. “Leastways, it's none of my business, beggin’ your pardon, miss. You'll have your reasons, I expect, as I don't need the knowing of.”
“But you do know Mrs. Tibbit, then?”
“All of Lyme knows Maggie,” he said, with something of a smirk. “She lives down in Hull cottage, along the river.”
“The River Buddie?”1
He nodded, curiosity in his eyes. The River Buddie district is a famous place in Lyme, and not for charitable reasons.
“Miss Crawford was so good as to think of the Tibbit children,” I said, with a casual air, “and gathered some clothes among her tenants. I offered to take them to the widow, with our sympathies and compliments.”
“Then you'll be giving Old Maggie more consideration nor half the town,” James declared, “but that's like your ways, miss, if you don't mind my sayin “A zample to us all, so Jenny was sayin”; and I'm of her mind.”
A zample, indeed.
1 The Buddie was the name given to the mouth of the Lym river, from which Lyme derives its name. —Editor's note.
20 September 1804, cont.
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THE RIVER BUDDLE—WHICH I SHOULD SOONER CALL A STREAM— begins in the sweet grass of the high downs above Up Lyme, and ends in the salt freshness off the Cobb; but its narrow banks are crowded with a huddle of housing, and the district bears a very ill reputation. So much I had already known; but more salacious details were imparted to me by Miss Crawford, when I called upon that lady in the guise of charity, to solicit clothing for the bereaved Tibbits—for I should not like to appeal’ in the neighbourhood without a clear purpose, lest my visit to the widow excite local speculation.
“Maggie Tibbit?” Miss Crawford said, peering at me over her spectacles as I sat in the Darby drawing-room. “If the woman had been possessed of sense, she should have married anyone but the man she did; and having committed that folly, she should have determined to bear fewer children. There are no less than five, you will understand, and all of them decidedly ill-favoured.”
“But deprived, nonetheless, of the support of a fa-ther,” I had rejoined mildly. “Winter is coming on, Miss Crawford, and the condescension of the ladies of St. Michael's could hardly be better bestowed. Consider what Mrs. Tibbit's anxieties must be—and how slim the wretched woman's resources—with so many pitiful mouths to feed!”
“Aye, Maggie's resources are slim enough,” Miss Crawford rejoined with a snort of contempt. “She has but one, as I'm sure you'll observe, do you persist in this foolish errand.”
I made no reply, but awaited the outcome of Miss Crawford's benevolence; and in an instant, she had tidied her needlework with an air of decision, and