Perhaps '* Shoemaker's Village,' 
 Henry Holbeach, should be regarded as a 
 series of essays, rather than as a novel ; but 
 in eifcher respect the two volumes are altogether 
 delightful. The village itself, the ways and 
 means of the principal inhabitants, and the 
 striking and charming figure of the heroine, are 
 all drawn in sharp and clear lines that quiver with 
 light, and with a happy audacity of 
 humour. Quite as satisfactory as a piece 
 of literary workmanship Is " Through the 
 ** Looking-glass, and what Alice saw there," 
 which adult readers will be glad to lift out of the 
 category of children's books, and place upon their 
 own shelves. We have reserved for the close of 
 this brief recapitulation the most remarkable con- 
 tribution to fiction mad^ during the year, George 
 Eliot's " Middlemarch," a section only of which 
 belongs by right to 1871. We need only say that 
 the promise contained in this instalment is a good 
 t of a remarkable work to come.
 
 *l^i^ 
 
 
 LI B RARY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 UNIVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 1?\5s
 
 SHOEMAKERS' VILLAGE
 
 /^^T^^^^^f-^ k^SB^^^^^ 
 
 "^ 
 
 SHOEMAKERS' VILLAGE 
 
 By henry HOLBEACH 
 
 TWO VOLUMES.— I. 
 
 STRAHAN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1871
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
 
 ?23 
 
 f,}"^ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TTOW crudely and indiscriminately the happy 
 
 folks will talk about the jewel that adversity 
 
 wears, and the use of unfavourable circum- 
 
 ^ stances in strengthening and bringing out the 
 
 . character. The winds that threaten the great 
 
 ^ oak serve to root it deeper and strengthen its 
 
 ^ sinewy green arms, they say. But, alas ! we 
 
 \ must distinguish. No child of the field or the 
 
 ^ forest was ever yet improved by being set in a bad 
 
 ^ soil, or battered by angry incessant gales. 
 
 ^ Look at a tree on the top of a cliff on a windy 
 
 m shore ; notice its struggles of self-help ; how it 
 
 jt
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 sends out stronger root-branches, strains and 
 clings and stretches with its feet, in the effort to 
 hold on the bare life it gets out of the cruel crag. 
 In another and more kindly place it would not 
 have done this ; and shall we not pity the beauti- 
 ful struggling tree .-* We are glad it does not let 
 itself fall over, but we know it cannot be such a 
 bonny green thing as if it had the chance to branch 
 out freely everyvv^here. It has had too much * ad- 
 versity,' poor tree. What life needs for beauty and 
 various power is various experience. Why should 
 not variety of experience in human life have the 
 same effect on human character as the wind has on 
 the trees ; catching them on every side, and giving 
 them perfection of form, and lovely versatility of 
 relation to the landscape .? If you look closely at 
 a tree that has grown in such a position that the 
 wind has caught it mostly on one side, you see
 
 shoemakers' village. 
 
 that the tree has not only a distorted shape, but 
 that the growth of leaf is deficient on the windy 
 side. There are knots, or stumps, where the tree 
 has tried to have branches, only the cold wind has 
 spoiled the poor struggHng buds from time to 
 time. From these knots or stumps, and from the 
 gaps along the stem, you can figure to yourself 
 what a lovely tree it might have been if it had 
 been able to fling out its boughs all round in the 
 sweet soft air. 
 
 If you remember the appearance of straggling 
 trees in bleak barren spots, you may feel sure that 
 when God makes a new heaven and a new earth, 
 we shall not see trees like them. Because their 
 aspect is in harmony with the scene, as we have 
 been accustomed to see it, they tell a tale of 
 their own in which we may find beauty, if our own 
 mood is fitting ; but they arc not beauty itself.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 They are not like their fellows of the leaf which 
 grow in good park or forest-land — in massy clumps 
 for company, and yet not too close together for 
 happy expansive life — with now and then an 
 officer-tree, that has stepped out in front of the 
 ranks, and stands forth before the woodland, an 
 example and a glory in the joy of its beautiful 
 green life : or like the fine fellows that you may 
 see pressing up a loamy hill, with one bold tree 
 waving its boughs at the top, as if it had run a 
 glad race and won it. 
 
 It certainly seems to me as if it could scarcely 
 be a happy thing for any human tree to have first 
 peeped above the soil in Shoemakers' Village. 
 But Cherry White, the Tomboy of the place, was 
 certainly a handsome sapling ; she reminded one 
 of a mountain birch, fresh with the rains and the 
 breezes of the hill-range.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 T T was such a pouring wet night ; the streets 
 looked so utterly miserable in the driving, 
 splashing rain, that Mrs Branch had just deter- 
 mined on shutting up for the night her little pastry- 
 shop, situated on the outskirts of Shoemakers' 
 Village, though it was only a few minutes past 
 nine o'clock, and she burnt, not gas, but common 
 oil, in a rather dismal-looking lamp. Mrs Branch 
 was a motherly-looking elderly woman, with ten- 
 der brown eyes and a soon-flushing face ; but as 
 she wore round spectacles with old-fashioned tor- 
 toise-shell rims to them, she looked too quaint a
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 person, too open in herself to ridicule, to make 
 another shy, and might even be supposed not to 
 see very well. 
 
 As she stood at her shop-door, feeling satisfied 
 that nobody would be passing her way for such 
 superfluities as pies and tarts on so drenching and 
 windy a night, she became aware of the sound of a 
 slow footstep. A shabbily-dressed man approach- 
 ed, lowered his umbrella, and entered the shop. 
 His boots were clogged with clay and red mud, for 
 he had been wandering among the brick fields, and 
 had only now been driven by hunger from the 
 shelter of an outhouse, where he had been sitting 
 on a clump of straw, with a wheelbarrow set on end 
 to shield him from the wind and wet — a little. 
 His well-fitting but threadbare clothes were button- 
 ed up to the chin — for lack of linen underneath — 
 and his umbrella was an ugly dark green gingham
 
 SHOE^IAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 affair, with a hook handle of bro\\'n horn. Mrs 
 Branch could discern through her queer round 
 goggles two things — that he was stiff with pride 
 and famished with want. 
 
 ' Madam,' said he, ' I want ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' gently interposed Mrs Branch, finding 
 he hesitated ; she put down the shutter, and ad- 
 dressed him as if he had been a prince, or — an 
 esteemed preacher in that Particular Baptist con- 
 nection which contained nearly everything on earth 
 that Mrs Branch held venerable. 
 
 * Yes, sir } ' said she, interrogatively, with some- 
 thing of the air and tone of a tender mother, and 
 something of the respectfulness of a servant ad- 
 dressing a master. 
 
 * Madam,' resumed the man, with an attempt at 
 jauntiness, ' I wish — to ask — is there a Mr Douglas 
 Percy living in this neighbourhood .? '
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 * No, sir, there is not — to my knowledge,' replied 
 Mrs Branch, fancying that the name Douglas Percy 
 had an unreal, playbill sort of sound with it. Was 
 it invented on the spur of the moment ? 
 
 ^ Thank you,' said the man, weaving his hand, as 
 if it was of no consequence, and marching stiffly 
 away into the wet again, with his umbrella. As 
 Mrs Branch heard his even footsteps plashing down 
 the path, she began again at the shutters, and had 
 got as far as the third — she was not brisk in her 
 movements — when the shabbily-dressed man came 
 up again ; this time, he put down his umbrella with 
 a sudden decisive clash, and stepped into the shop 
 with an air which was almost threatening. Indeed, 
 poor Mrs Branch stepped round the counter, and 
 fi-om behind that entrenchment, glared rather tim- 
 idly at the wan, faint face of the stranger, who now 
 spoke first in a clear but hoarse and thirsty voice —
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 ' Madam ! I wish for ... . one of those .... 
 meat pies,' pointing to a set of pies in flat tin 
 dishes. 
 
 Mrs Branch longed to offer him a bottle of ginger- 
 beer ; but reflecting that ginger-beer might not be 
 good for an empty stomach, she had got half-way 
 into her little parlour in search of a cup of milk ; 
 yet she stood in a certain awe of the man's proud 
 way, and feared to offend him by offering anything 
 for which he had not asked. His voice, now a 
 little sharper, recalled her to the counter — 
 
 ' One of those meat pies,' said the stranger. 
 
 ' Yes, sir,' said Mrs Branch, carefully shovelling 
 the pie into a paper bag, and handing it to him ; 
 whilst he was, apparently, feeling in his pocket for 
 the money. 
 
 * Dear me,' resumed the stranger, after some fum- 
 bling at his trousers, ' I regret— I am very sorry—
 
 lO SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 how foolish of me — I find I have left my purse 
 somewhere. I must beg you, madam, to accept 
 
 my my umbrella as a pledge 
 
 until I pass this way again . . . Are you quite 
 siwe Mr Percy does not reside anywhere near 
 here .? ' 
 
 ' Oh, sir,' said the widow, pathetically, ' do not 
 think of such a thing ! I give a good deal of trust, 
 and you can pay me any time ! ' 
 
 ' Thank you ; no,' said the stranger ; ' I prefer to 
 leave a ... a guarantee ; ' and, setting up the um- 
 brella against the counter, he was gone in a moment ; 
 the pie put nonchalantly into his pocket. His speed 
 of pace, poor man, had two motives : he wanted to 
 hurry from a scene of shame, and he was in anguish 
 to get a morsel of food into his mouth. 
 
 He was more to be pitied than Mrs Branch ; but 
 she, too, was an object of compassion. The tears
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 came into her slow, elderly eyes, and her first im- 
 pulse was to rush out into the rain after the forlorn 
 wretch, and force him to take back his umbrella. 
 But she could not decide to do this — she stood in 
 awe of ' a gentleman ; ' and, after a sad pause, 
 ended by a long, deep sigh, she put up the two 
 remaining shutters, and closed the shop. Then she 
 fell into a melancholy muse, with her arms folded, 
 leaning forward upon her little counter ; then me- 
 chanically trimming the ' snaice' of the lamp-wick ; 
 lastly, wiping her spectacles, for, in truth, the 
 glasses were wet on the inner side. But she had 
 barely got them astride upon her nose again, when 
 she heard an authoritative loud tapping at the 
 shop-door. 
 
 'Who is there .-^'she asked, coming from behind 
 the counter, and laying hold of the latch. 
 
 ' It is I, madam ; it is I ; open the door ! ' said
 
 12 shoemakers' village. 
 
 a voice, which she instantly recognized as that of 
 the stranger. 
 
 ' Thank God ! ' said she to herself, and drew the 
 bolt vv^ith a beating heart. 
 
 ^ Come in, sir, come in,' she said, or tried to say, 
 for the impetuosity of the man's speech and beha- 
 viour overthrew her utterly. He would not enter ; 
 there was a flush of anger on his famine-pale face ; 
 but he spoke up, though with a voice which was like 
 an articulate sob, as he flung down the just-bitten 
 meat pie. 
 
 * Take back your pie, ma'am — -take it — it is not 
 fit for a dog to eat — take your pie ! I am a gentle- 
 man, madam, a gentleman, and have not been accus- 
 tomed to eat carrion.' 
 
 Swift as lightning he was gone, and he slammed 
 the door to behind him. The wind blew, the rain 
 poured, and Mrs Branch burst into tears ; but.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I3 
 
 mechanically smelling at the wretched pie, she 
 found, to her confusion, that the meat was really 
 * turned.' Still more mechanically she opened the 
 umbrella, and with a housewifely curiosity that 
 was ludicrous in its incongruity, was actually scru- 
 tinizing the ribs and fastenings through her goggles 
 w^hen she heard another knocking at the door. 
 
 ' Who's there ^ ' said the poor old lady, scarcely 
 able to speak for crying ; ' who is it ? ' 
 
 * It's me, Mrs Branch ; it's Cherry White ; it's 
 Tomboy — all in the wet.' 
 
 And, Mrs Branch hastily opening the door, there 
 stood Cherry, with her frock flung from behind 
 over her head, like Virginia in the shower, only that 
 there was no Paul. 
 
 ' Oh, Mrs Branch,' said Cherry, gaily, ' I only 
 want a ' 
 
 ' Child, child ! ' interrupted Mrs Branch, laying
 
 14 shoemakers' village. 
 
 one hand on the shoulder of the amazed Cherry, and 
 holding out the green gingham umbrella with the 
 other, * take this and run after a gentleman that's 
 gone down the lane to the left hand, and make him 
 take it — and bring him back, if you can — and God 
 '11 bless you, Cherry ! Make haste, my dear, my 
 dear ; you're so clever, you can do anything ; make 
 haste ! ' 
 
 So then Cherry, fairly pushed out into the street, 
 found herself commissioned to bring back some- 
 body if she could, but at all events to make him 
 take a green gingham umbrella. The first thing 
 she did was to put it up for shelter ; but she had 
 not gone many steps before she saw a slim, long- 
 legged figure advancing rapidly towards her. 
 She knew the legs ; they belonged to Woods, 
 the sandy-haired Sunday-school teacher_, of the 
 Particular Baptist connection at Zoar Chapel —
 
 shoemakers' village. 15 
 
 the Cumbersome Christians as Cherry called 
 them. 
 
 Now Cherry herself was High Church — not to 
 say Ritualistic ; and between her and the Cumber- 
 some Christians in general, not to say Woods in 
 particular, there was a sort of cheerful feud. But 
 a woman, or a girl, was never yet too proud to 
 make use of even an enemy ; and Cherry imme- 
 diately resolved to put this Cumbersome Chris- 
 tian on his chivalric mettle. 
 
 ' Oh, Mr Woods ! ' she exclaimed, quite amiably, 
 ' I'm so glad I met you ! Did you see a gentleman 
 walking the way you've just come — without any 
 umbrella ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, miss, I did,' answered Woods, with a 
 slight rising inflection in his voice, which suggested 
 that he was born north of the Tweed. 
 
 ' Oh, that is good of you ! ' , said Tomboy
 
 i6 shoemakers' village. 
 
 absurdly, but not ineffectively. ' Mother Branch 
 — I mean Mrs Branch — wants him directly .... 
 it's very important,' she continued, solemnly ; * and 
 if he won't come, you're to make him take this 
 umbrella, please, teacher.' 
 
 This is a sad plebeian opening to my little 
 narrative, but there is no remedy. And, indeed, 
 the situation is tragic, — if you had seen the distress 
 of Mrs Branch, even as far only as she exhibited it, 
 you would have thought so. But what the poor old 
 lady showed was the least portion of what she felt. 
 She would have gone without a dinner, without 
 many dinners, herself, rather than that any one 
 else — much more a man^ and a gentleman — should 
 hunger. For Mrs Branch had the woman's natural 
 respect for a man, and a notion, w^hich most women 
 seem to have likewise, that for men to w-ant is 
 worse than for them to want. And now, what had
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I J 
 
 happened ? She had driven a starving gentleman 
 away into the night, with exasperated hunger and 
 exasperated pride. And what might not come of 
 it .'' It was very late that night before Mrs Branch 
 got to sleep. She was in prayer at her bedside 
 for a long time ; weeping a little, * wrestling with 
 the Lord,' as she called it, a good deal. If you 
 had been able to peep inside her room, and (which 
 is, of course, absurd) had done it, you would have 
 seen her queer old night-capped figure, kneeling, 
 and swaying a little from side to side, while 
 she kept up a continuous murmuring sound which 
 might have been heard in the next room. She was, 
 of course, an ignorant elderly woman, and used in- 
 congruous phrases in her prayers. For example, 
 there was no congruity or sense in her addressing 
 Almighty God as the ' Lord God of Sabaoth,' 
 
 or in speaking of God every now and then in the 
 VOL. \. . c
 
 i8 shoemakers' village. 
 
 third person, instead of using the language of direct 
 address. But that was Mrs Branch's way of wrestUng 
 with the Lord in prayer that she might be enabled 
 to see His hand in this poor, shocking little ex- 
 perience.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHOEMAKERS' VILLAGE is not the place 
 to go to for boots and shoes of extraordinary 
 quality, or for any other particular product of nature 
 or art that cannot just as readily be obtained else- 
 where, quite as cheap, or *cheaper, quite as good, 
 or better. But it is not a wholly uninteresting 
 place to people with eyes and ears. It lies in a 
 hollow which was once entirely rural, between, on 
 the one hand, a neighbourhood of respectable 
 suburban villas, gradually shading off into half- 
 finished streets, and, on the other hand, a semi- 
 suburban district, which may be called rural until
 
 20 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 you come to villas again — villas which have sprung 
 up around a railway station lying some miles from 
 the town. Some of the little streets were once 
 respectable enough in their modest way ; they 
 struggle to keep up appearances still ; and, at the 
 outskirts of the Villacre, there are houses which 
 were once quite detached, and which look rustic 
 and old-fashioned to this day. They have the 
 advantage, too, of being on the side which is nearest 
 to the open country. Generally, I should think 
 there was a sort of consciousness of semi-rurality 
 latent in the minds of the Villagers — who have 
 most of them garden groiuid, as distinguished from 
 gardens. There are real farm-houses within the 
 limits of the Village, construing the word rather 
 liberally ; there is in the Village a little boy who is 
 reputed to have cut his nose in two over a turned 
 ploughshare ; and the Villagers throw dead cats,
 
 SHOEilAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 dogs, and rats Into the market-gardens that abut 
 upon the ends of the streets at one side. I once 
 overheard a small Villager, in a torn and degraded 
 knickerbocker suit, say to his mother — 
 
 ' O mother, I should so like to walk along the 
 tops of that row of cabbages .? ' 
 
 But who ever heard of reverencing Nature in the 
 shape of vegetables ? 
 
 Shoemakers' Village is, in fact, a crude, unor- 
 namental agglomeration of houses, the rise and 
 collection of which could no doubt be related with 
 great ease by the oldest inhabitant, but which has 
 been left behind by the advances of the politer 
 portions of the neighbourhood to which it hangs on 
 like a shed to a mansion. In those politer neigh- 
 bourhoods it is known as the Village, or less 
 elegantly, though more frequently, the Willage. 
 When the working-man gets up cross, and sits down
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 to his breakfast glum, the watchful house-mother 
 says to the Tilly Slowboy of the menage — 
 
 ' There, Sarah Jane ! your master's been and got 
 out o' bed on the wrong side agin. You jest run 
 to the Willage, and get a bloater or a 'addick — he 
 wants a relish — and you can pay next time.' It is 
 one of the moral superstitions of the Village Proper 
 and the Village Improper, or, as we may say, the 
 Inner and the Outer Village, — or, again, the Village 
 and the Willage, — that, when a man gets up cross, 
 he wants a relish. The Willage, then, has quite a 
 reputation for * bloaters,' and * haddicks,' and 
 ' rashers,' and everything in the nature of a ' relish,' 
 eggs, called heggs by the Villagers, and water- 
 cresses, known in the community as creases. To 
 such an extent is the great Relish System carried 
 in the Village that I have heard of a little chit of a 
 girl from the Village engaged to help another
 
 shoemakers' village. 
 
 23 
 
 servant in the house-work at a ' place ' outside of 
 the Village, giving her mistress notice because she'd 
 always been accustomed to her relish at breakfast 
 every morning, and couldn't heat a mossel without 
 it. In the Village Proper, i.e., the Willage, there is 
 one small coffee-shop in particular, much fre- 
 quented, I believe, by working-men attached to the 
 railway extensions, and other men of the kind who 
 have to get up early ; and in the windovv* of that 
 shop I once saw written up, on a greasy piece of 
 foolscap, the peremptory words — * No more Had- 
 dick or Bloaters will be cooked at this shop.* Now, 
 the inference I drew was that the surrounding male 
 population had been in the habit of taking into this 
 shop salt fish, haddock or herring, for their dinners, 
 and getting it cooked for nothing, on the strength 
 of buying a cup of coffee or something of that kind, 
 but that this kind of business had at last become
 
 24 shoemakers' village. 
 
 as excessive as it must always have been unre- 
 munerative. 
 
 To make money by keeping shop among the very 
 poor is not by any means a difficult task. Mr 
 Potts, the keeper of the chief beer-shop in the 
 Village, and Mr Luckin, the proprietor of the 
 general shop which is most esteemed for such 
 delicacies as marmalade at eightpence a pot, and 
 golden syrup, which means treacle, to say nothing 
 of family jam, which means a sort of fruity mixed 
 pickle, are both of them warm men. So, too, is the 
 baker, who, in his own proper line of relish, — the 
 hot roll, — does an enormous trade. At a time not 
 too remote to be readily recalled, Mr Potts and Mr 
 Luckin having embarked in a quarrel which arose 
 out of some betting transactions, a fight ensued, 
 and out of the fight arose an action-at-law, in which 
 one side recovered damages against the other — I
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 25 
 
 do not know which side — but I heard that the side 
 which lost was found to be quite equal to paying 
 off-hand such a little matter of law-costs as two 
 hundred and fifty pounds. I fancy the most en- 
 lightened members of the general public have but 
 a poor idea of the rate at which keepers of general 
 shops feed. But consider the temptations to which 
 they are exposed — living as they do in the neigh- 
 bourhood of relishes all day and all night. Their 
 very parlour smells of bacon, and, if there wasn't 
 room for all their stock of American cheeses, they'd 
 pile up a few in the bed-rooms. Mr and Mrs 
 Luckin, with their daughter Amelia — of whom 
 more will be said by-and-by — revel in eggs, and 
 cheese, and Wiltshire bacon, and German sausage, 
 and ham, and marmalade. They are all three as 
 fat as butter — Mr Luckin, indeed, is as fat as two or 
 three butter-casks rolled into one — and how the
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 little pony manages to draw them when they go 
 out ' of a Sunday afternoon ' for their weekly airing, 
 is known, I suppose, to providence and the pony. As 
 for Mrs Luckin, she is a hogshead — she waddles — 
 she half fills the space behind the little counter, and 
 it is quite a sight, when she lifts her globose arms, 
 and reaching the thing down from the shelf, rests 
 upon her globose bosom one of the green canisters, 
 hieroglyphed in gold with pseudo-Chinese, in which 
 the Luckins keep what they sell for tea — for it is a 
 curious fact that the poor have no idea of the taste 
 of either tea or coffee. Coffee they think ought to 
 boil — tea ought to * stand on the hob to draw,' — and 
 chicory or sloe leaf will very well serve their turn. 
 However, poor Mrs Luckin has been several years 
 * under a medical man to keep down the fat.' Pray 
 observe that it is not etiquette in the Village to 
 speak of the doctor, except in confinement cases —
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 27 
 
 you must always say ' medical man.' Also, that 
 the chief, and almost the only disease known in the 
 Village, — besides Rheumatics, — is Inflammation. 
 ' He's not expected to live — he's got Inflammation,' 
 — that was a sufficiently precise bulletin in the Vil- 
 lage. The complaint might be inflammation of the 
 brain, or inflammation of the pancreas — but it was 
 all one to the Villagers : that terrible word Inflam- 
 mation was quite enough to indicate that it was 
 going hard with a sick person, and ' he's got Inflam- 
 mation ' was always spoken with a lifting of the 
 brows and a tone of solemn deprecation — as who 
 should say — ' Think of t/iat, now ! Vo^i may have 
 Inflammation some day ! ' 
 
 The superficial cultus or religion of the Village 
 presents a curious aspect to the casual observer. 
 Of the deeper religious life which is there I shall 
 have something to say presently. But, to a
 
 28 shoemakers' village. 
 
 passing observer, the chief religion of Shoemakers' 
 Village would certainly appear to consist in going 
 to the Cemetery, or Cimetairy, as the Villagers pro- 
 nounce it, on a Sunday afternoon. It happens in 
 this wise. The men grub and moon about unshaven 
 all the Sunday morning, smoking clay pipes, and 
 getting into the way of the women. It is a rooted . 
 superstition in the Village that you never need 
 * clean yourself ' — that is the phrase — till after 
 dinner ; before which great sacred event, curl- 
 papers, beards unshaven, and faces unwashed are 
 quite allowable. At about a quarter before one on 
 a Sunday morning, the lord and master of a house- 
 hold in the Village begins to wake up to the 
 necessity of asserting himself. Dinner will soon be 
 home from the baker's — probably a piece of beef 
 reposing on a three-legged iron ' rest ' in the middle 
 of a pool of batter. So he begins to make an im-
 
 SHOExMAKERS VILLAGE. 29 
 
 petuous pretence of being useful, by scraping away 
 at the horse-radish — which he does with a hissing 
 sound, the children looking on, and the youngest 
 making sudden dabs at the falling shreds, at the risk 
 of cut fingers. After dinner, ' we clean ourselves ; ' 
 then dressing — a very hot, hurried, troublesome, 
 scuttling sort of business, everybody being uncom- 
 fortable from having eaten too much ; and then, off 
 to the Cimetairy, with a vague idea of performing a 
 religious duty. If there happens — and of course 
 there does happen — to be a funeral or two going on, 
 there is something like a religious service to attend, 
 and you have to take your hat off in the open air, 
 while somebody is reading something which ends 
 with Amen. This is decidedly a religious exercise. 
 But, in any case, you walk about, with the baby in 
 your arms, if you arc good-natured, and it isn't too 
 hot (for a ?;ia/i) ; and you read scraps of texts on
 
 30 shoemakers' village. 
 
 tombstones, and, of course, highly poetical epitaphs. 
 It is well known that the Englishman often puts a 
 scrap of Scripture on a tombstone by way of charm 
 or rune, or with a vague idea that it is a sort of 
 written absolution for the person whose remains 
 lie belovv^ As thus : — 
 
 Sacred to the ]\Iemory 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN THOMPSON, 
 
 OF 
 
 THIS Parish"; 
 
 Who departed this Life 
 
 22ND May, 1864. 
 
 Aged 57. 
 
 Prepare to meet thy God I 
 
 Or, thus :— 
 
 In ^Iemory 
 
 OF 
 
 ANNE WELSH, 
 
 Wife of Ralph Welsh, 
 
 OF this Parish ; 
 
 Who died January 8, i860. 
 
 Aged 65. 
 
 All flesh is grass.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 Sometimes there is a bit of original poetry, like 
 this: 
 
 What is Man ? a falling leaf ; 
 
 We bid thee now a long farewell ; 
 We are left resigned to grief, 
 
 To all our hopes a solemn knell. 
 
 Hallehikih ! 
 
 Such an epitaph as this the Villager reads aloud to 
 M'ria, with dislocating emphasis ; but he has a 
 vague idea that, applied to the death of a disagree- 
 able, fat man of seventy-five, whom nobody cared 
 about, it is humbug ; only that is not a word to be 
 uttered in a cemetery ; so he says — 
 * M'ria, that's rather flowery, ain't it ? * 
 But Maria has so much simple faith in the mere 
 word Hallelujah, that she is silent, and shakes her 
 head with an air of piety which crushes her husband, 
 who feels that religion is a matter in which women 
 must have their own way — a sort of serious addition
 
 Z^ shoemakers' village. 
 
 to the housekeeping. In the subtler under-currents 
 of ethical assumption which really determine the 
 shape life takes in the Village, and all similar 
 Villages, it is held the privilege and dignity of the 
 male human animal to drink and swear and swaeeer 
 and be kept in reserve by the milder female as a 
 bugbear to frighten the children with : * You behave 
 yourself, Henry Adolphus, or else I'll tell your 
 father, sir.' Women, being weaker and more 
 pusillanimous, are permitted to frighten themselves 
 with ' religion,' and to dilute their food with tea. 
 The reader perhaps knows whether kindred moral 
 assumptions are at all influential in other places. 
 
 After all, it is very hazardous to generalize in 
 ethical matters — different people do take similar 
 things so differently. Cherry once confided to 
 me, with her usual frankness and volubility, her 
 impressions upon this subject. * Folks differ so,'
 
 shoemakers' village. 33 
 
 said she ; ' there's Church people, and Cumber- 
 some Christians, and Quakers, and curly hair, and 
 straight hair, and people that can spell properly 
 and people that never could, not if they was to 
 swallow a dictionary ! There's a show in the 
 Village where there's a baby with three legs. 
 Look at chimney-pots. Why should they be 
 made so different ^ But there's such varieties of 
 things in Nature, you never know where you are ; 
 I suppose it's because landlords have such a variety 
 of dispositions. Characters are different, and 
 chimney-pots are different.' Cherry is quite right. 
 Some of the things which I have seen in the Village 
 simply shock me over again for the thousandth 
 time with the great puzzle of human misery ; I feel 
 helpless in presence of so much that is horrible, 
 and the only resolution which I am enabled to form 
 is to go and do my duty better as it arises in little 
 
 VOL. I. b
 
 34 shoemakers' village. 
 
 demands upon me from day to day. But others, I 
 find, are affected in quite a different way. They 
 are touched, not in their hearts, or even their 
 imaginations, but in their heads and their theories. 
 They just collate the facts in presence of a remem- 
 bered doctrine, and — walk on the other side. One 
 day, in Shoemakers' Village, I came across Mr 
 Shears, an enlightened tailor, a man with a Ben- 
 thammy mind, native to the spot, I believe, and I 
 uttered some passing exclamations of disgust at the 
 things which I could see, hear, and (to be candid) 
 smell, and, generally, at the large quantity of pre- 
 ventible misery there was in the world. My en- 
 lightened tailor went off in the most vv^ooden manner 
 into ' the greatest 'appiness of the greatest number.' 
 The hearty admission from me that Bentham was 
 a very great reformer, and that I should like to 
 set him and Franklin down together in the Village,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 35 
 
 with a Peabody purse behind them, to put it all to 
 rights, did not stop the current of his droning talk 
 about the greatest 'applness. V/hile we stood talk- 
 ing, the tail of a poor but multitudinously-attended 
 funeral came up, and marched, in Indian file,, into 
 the public-house, the rear being brought up by a 
 wretched woman with a black eye, surrounded by 
 inches of extravasation, to which she was holding 
 a dirty white rag, while her husband was threaten- 
 ing and cursing at a rate I never heard exceeded 
 in all my life. 
 
 ' That's a horrible sight,' said I ; * in order to set 
 straight what is wrong in the little spectacle now 
 before us, we should surely need to summon the 
 whole army of divinely-gifted or best-cultivated 
 human creatures. The doctor to cure and cleanse 
 those squalid, sickly Vv-retches ; the divine prophet 
 to quicken their torpid souls ; the moralist to teach
 
 36 shoemakers' village. 
 
 them decency ; the gentle, high-born, wise lady to 
 soothe their brutal natures ; the poet to sing to 
 them ; the musician to play to them.' My tailor 
 was not in the least moved from his own line. 
 The prophet, the poet, the divine sweet woman, 
 the musician, were not at all in his way, and I 
 left him droning about ' those sanitary laws,' and 
 ' the greatest 'appiness of the greatest number.' 
 
 I am not crying up any weak, exclamatory, 
 excitable way of looking at sad and horrible things. 
 I know very well that a surgeon may use the 
 knife with the nerve of a lion and the tenderness of 
 a mother. But some people are so wooden. Which 
 is the more irritating of the two — that insensibility 
 to the mystery and wonder of things which shows 
 itself in a wooden irreceptiveness of beauty and 
 pathos, or that which shows itself in a wooden 
 insusceptibility to what is horrible and preternatural
 
 in the shames, abominations, and distresses of Hfe ? 
 I do not know. To one man a primrose by the 
 river's brim is a yellow primrose and nothing more ; 
 to another man, brother to the first, a brutal quarrel 
 is a fight, and nothing more — while you and I find 
 in it a hint of hell, can smell the sulphur and see 
 the fire.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 T T must not be supposed that the religious oppor- 
 tunities of Shoemakers' Village are confined 
 to what the existence of a cemetery within a walk 
 can afford. Perhaps a Comtist would think that 
 even this was something — especially for those/r^//- 
 taires in whom Comte had such almost unlimited 
 faith. But the fact is that these obscure little 
 streets, smelling like cinder-heaps too often, are 
 sprinkled with the sound of church-bells, and within 
 a very possible circuit there are Independent, 
 Wesleyan, and Particular Baptist chapels, and 
 all are well attended, though the Villagers most
 
 shoemakers' village. 39 
 
 affect the latter. From the village streets, at the 
 proper hours on Sundays, emerge smug little boys 
 and girls, with bags or books, who are bound for 
 Sunday-school. These children mostly go to 
 chapel ; and, seeing the unmistakable chapel look 
 they have about them, I have been much amused 
 sometimes at what happens in the street when a 
 stout, puffy old gentleman, or stiff old lady, fresh 
 from church, comes across a loitering group of 
 these little ones. ' Hah, hah ! ' says the old person, 
 benignantly waving a stick or a gloved hand, ' so 
 you've been to church, been to church, have you .'* ' 
 At this the children look sheepish, colour up, and 
 stand still, eyeing each other with glances of 
 inquiry. As soon as ever the old person is out of 
 sight or sound, they burst into subdued laughter ; 
 with their hands at their little mouths — because it 
 is not proper to laugh aloud * in the streets of a
 
 40 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 Sunday,' — they are immensely tickled with the 
 humour of its being supposed that they go to 
 church — they ! But they do not quite see how to 
 deal with the situation from the high moral point 
 of view. The old person so heartily presumes 
 church that the little girls of the party feel as if 
 there would be a sort of insolence in saying ' No ; 
 we've been to chapel, sir.' And then, again, the 
 boys have a vague terror of the beadle — with 
 whom, for what they know, this old person may 
 be in constant communication. You must know, 
 these sturdy, high-principled little nonconformists 
 do not cherish reverential feelings towards ' Church.' 
 They feel, however obscurely, that there is a sort of 
 ' I-can-do-your-dadds ' opposition between Dissent 
 and Clerisy, which might at any moment break out 
 in punching heads. Once, indeed, these very boys 
 — quite in a disinterested spirit of testimony, of
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 4T 
 
 course — made a noisy little rush into the church- 
 porch during the time of a week-day service, and 
 brought out the beadle, hot, hatless, and armed 
 with a cane. Since that event, which lingers in 
 their memories, and haunts their consciences, they 
 regard Church with mingled and scarcely definable 
 sentiments, so that they are naturally shy of the 
 subject, not knowing what retributive animosity 
 may linger in the minds of any of the Church's 
 adherents. That old person, for example, may be 
 in league with the clergyman and the beadle. He 
 may know all about that raid into the church- 
 porch. His design may be to entrap these young 
 people into a confession of nonconformity, and 
 then make an aiito-da-fc oxv the spot. 
 
 Sunday-school children in the Village, as well as 
 elsewhere, are the conductors of a good deal of 
 religious sentiment to quarters which it would other-
 
 42 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 wise never reach at all. Many a rough fellow who 
 has a dogged, rebellious dislike of the idea of going 
 to chapel or church himself, who would look upon 
 it as not being game, as giving in, as doing some- 
 thing fit only for women and children, has a kind of 
 superstitious awe of those who do go to places of 
 worship, and is to be seen subdued and serious in 
 their presence, as if he fancied they had brought 
 away something fetish from the sacred place. If 
 his children go to Sunday-school, he experiences a 
 compunctious curiosity about what they are taught 
 there. Assuming airs of paternal superiority, while 
 he is really quaking in his heart, he listens to their 
 Sunday-school prattle, and sometimes, perhaps, asks 
 them leading questions about what they have learnt ; 
 or he smokes his pipe, and listens in half-sullen, 
 half-gentle wonder. 
 
 Besides the Church, and the Independent, Wes-
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 43 
 
 leyan, and Particular Baptist Chapels, the Vil- 
 lage proper, the Willage, had opportunities within 
 its own boundaries. The Zoar chapel people set 
 up, several years ago, a Sunday-school in an ob- 
 scure corner of the Village itself, catching in that 
 manner a great many stray children who w^ould 
 never go to the larger school situated at a distance. 
 On the Sunday evenings this school-room was 
 turned into a chapel. The walls were simply white- 
 washed ; the only ornaments being square slips of 
 paper, on which were printed texts out of the Bible, 
 such as ' Remember now thy Creator in the days 
 of thy youth,' — * Suffer the little children to come 
 unto me,' — ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
 self,' — * Lyhig lips are abomination to the Lord.' 
 The forms had no backs to them at first, and the 
 general effect, on a hot summer evening in particu- 
 lar, was rather close and gassy. Uneasy as I always
 
 44 SHOE^IAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 am until I have thoroughly explored any place to 
 which I am introduced, I have been m.yself to this 
 preaching-station, and sat out the service. I have 
 had for my next neighbour on the bench a Avorking- 
 man, whose clothes smelt so strongly of varnish as 
 to make me half sick — a cabinet-maker, you see, 
 who had only one suit of clothes. Once, too, I 
 handed the open hymn-book, without looking par- 
 ticularly at it, to a poor young woman who sat next 
 to me, and happened to be glancing the other way, 
 as she accepted it. She did not sing, and when, 
 after a few seconds, I did turn round, I noticed that 
 the book was upside down, and that the only ex- 
 pression on the young woman's face was an agony of 
 fatuity, which plainly enough proclaimed that she 
 could not read. 
 
 The active spirit at this preaching-station was 
 Woods — whom we have already met as * Teacher.*
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 45 
 
 He was a Scotchman, but with none of the Scotch 
 accent, and only just the Scotch emphasis, and the 
 Scotch trick of finishing a sentence with a rising 
 inflection. He had a wild and fiery shock of sandy 
 hair, a gauntly-built figure — 
 
 * His shoulders braid, his armis lang ' 
 
 — like Jock-o'-Hazeldean's, and a very soft, quiet, 
 serious manner. He always walked straight on like 
 a machine, like a stage ghost, or as if he were being 
 blown along by an unswerving gale of wind. There 
 was a rumour that Woods's knees were like the 
 Apostle James's — callous with perpetual kneeling ; 
 but this could not be true, considering his active 
 habits. Certain it is, however, that his face had a 
 serious tenderness in it, which is never seen on a 
 human countenance except during or immediately 
 after a time of devotion. This expression of coun-
 
 46 shoemakers' village. 
 
 tenance has been called ' the family likeness of the 
 children of God.' In Woods's case it had the happy- 
 distinction of being unadulterated by that conscious 
 complacency which so often makes it questionable 
 in its immediate influence upon others. Woods 
 was a striking illustration of what is generally — I 
 sorrowfully admit, not always — true, namely, that 
 if a man have only a certain amount of strength 
 and purity of character, if, in a word, he can make 
 himself believed in, he may defy very intimate and 
 peculiar prejudices in the circles to which he belongs. 
 Thus, on the secular evenings, I have heard Woods, 
 in that hot little room of his, give Readings of a 
 kind which I am very sure Zoar chapel did not 
 like ; but the voice of Zoar did not rise even from 
 a whisper to a murmur — the character of this 
 good young man carried all before it. 
 
 His chief fault was that he seemed to think
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 47 
 
 every human being was bound to be a Sunday- 
 school teacher, and join in ' the work,' as he called 
 it. He always said * the work,' as if there were no 
 other. He was apt to look a little coldly upon 
 other serious people who, having any scraps of 
 leisure, would not join in 'the work ; ' and he was 
 gravely displeased, for example, with myself for 
 declining. I told him plainly, that for various 
 reasons I could not join him ; that I had my 
 own 'work,' to do which properly required more 
 than all my strength ; that I thought a Sun- 
 day-school by no means an unmixed good ; that, 
 for instance, it seemed to me a very bad thing 
 to force the children to keep quiet in mind and 
 limb, stewed up in such a hot hole for so long a time 
 twice a day, and then, very likely, march the poor 
 little wretches to chapel afterwards. Mr Woods 
 did not quite like this ; but wc must not bo hard
 
 48 shoemakers' village, 
 
 upon such a man because he had, in one direction 
 at least, a narrow imagination, and could not 
 discern that there are ten thousand thousand ways 
 of doing God's ^ work ' in the world. It is next 
 to impossible for any man to ally himself heart and 
 soul with any mode of action, and not to contract 
 special prejudices. The man of science, or the 
 historian, for example, too often treats the pursuits 
 of others as if there were nothing in the world like 
 his particular ' leather.' On one point Woods and 
 I came heartily together. I happened one day 
 to say that so long as a single human being had 
 no bread, I thought I had only a provisional right to 
 butter ; holding that right by this tenure only, 
 namely, that I did my best (in my own way) to 
 help the breadless to get bread — and butter too, in 
 time. ' Say that again,' said Woods, slowly and 
 attentively, and I repeated my confession of faith,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 49 
 
 to his great satisfaction, and he has, I dare say, 
 never forgotten it. 
 
 Besides his activities in teaching and preaching 
 proper, Woods was an active district-visitor. He- 
 was employed in business during the day, but in 
 the summer evenings you might see his gaunt yet 
 quiet figure moving through the least-enticing parts 
 of the Village on errands of kindness or con- 
 solation. Or, through an imperfectly-curtained 
 window, you might catch a glimpse of his sandy 
 shock head of hair at a bedside, his Hps moving, 
 and his hands waving in a rhythmic manner, which 
 suggested that he was repeating a hymn, or, at 
 least, verse of some kind. Woods had a genuine 
 taste in matters of poetry, and had his ideas, not 
 bad ones I assure you, about Wordsworth and 
 Tennyson. It would have done you good to assist 
 at the little aesthetic battles between him and that 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 scapegrace, Jack Evans (Jack Evans's some people 
 called him), who, with all the characteristics of the 
 traditional medical student, and never free from the 
 odour of stale tobacco, was a hanger-on at Zoar. 
 What lugubrious devoutness Jack brought to chapel 
 on Sundays and to the secular-day prayer-meet- 
 ings ! How close he always managed to seat him- 
 self to Mrs Padbury, a simple-hearted, rabbit-faced 
 widow woman, reputed to have a little property ! 
 How he used to haunt and pester Woods, and tell 
 him over and over again that he wanted to 'join,' 
 — preposterously unaware that the brand of Amalek 
 was on him, and that a bear in a poultry-yard 
 would not have been more out of place than he 
 wQuld be in our Zion ! Woods used to be much 
 entertained, too, with Jack's ideas of poetry. Jack 
 was not to my knowledge an Irishman ; but his 
 poetic taste was Irish, and all his leanings were
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 5I 
 
 backwards. , Nothing could ever drag him farther 
 forward into the nineteenth century than Bulwer- 
 Lytton — and I rather think that, even with Bulwer, 
 he stopped at Eugene Aram. Gentle Mrs Pad- 
 bury he used to terrify and subdue to distant awe 
 by quoting Dr Johnson — to whom, it is to be 
 feared, he attributed some speeches which, con- 
 sidered metaphysically, were anomalies, and, con- 
 sidered chronologically, anachronism. Woods he 
 could not impose upon, but he amused him. 
 
 * Ah, Woods ! we want nature in poetry — nature ! 
 
 *' You may break, you may shatter the vawse, if you will, 
 But the scent of the roses will stick to it still ! " 
 
 Thafs poetry ! Talk about Tennyson } There's 
 sentiment ! There's language ! You never have 
 that style now-a-days. . . . Ah ! . . . . Well, well, 
 every man to his taste. . . . Good-bye, good-bye, 
 God bless you, dear boy ! '
 
 52 shoemakers' village. 
 
 And off he would go, humming ' Ah, perdona ! ' 
 in Norma, or the hunting-song in Der Freischutz. 
 These high-strung phrases of affection at parting 
 were apparently a conversational necessity with 
 Jack Evans. It might be tolerably certain that you 
 would see him again to-morrow ; he was only going 
 tv/o miles off, perhaps ; but he would say his fare- 
 well as if he were outward-bound for the Cannibal 
 Islands. 
 
 What a wonderful, mixed world it is ! It takes, 
 says the proverb, all sorts of people to vtake a 
 world ; and some such thought lies at the bottom 
 of the esoteric philosophy of all thinkers. Nay, 
 it underlies all the high-class humour. Assuredly 
 it leavens all charitable constructions. Whenever 
 something very dreadful or irreconcilable comes 
 before us, we dodge that thing. The Cumber- 
 some Christians, if we are to take their expressed
 
 SHOExMAKERS' VILLAGE. 53 
 
 belief as final, could not have had a single reserve 
 in their minds as to the ultimate fate of human 
 beings like Cherry White, Cherry White's father, 
 and Jack Evans. Yet, if the facts had been really 
 forced home upon them, if they had at any moment 
 been shown in the light of strong emotion the 
 manner in which distinctions, which loom so large 
 in one perspective, shade off into insensibility in an- 
 other, they would have been only too glad to take 
 refuge in generalities. Blessed, to parody Sancho 
 Panza, blessed be he that first invented generalities, 
 for they cover a difiiculty all over like a cloak ! 
 
 If you had presented Jack Evans, of nowhere in 
 particular, but with a very ugly reputation, to 
 Mrs Padbury of Zoar, in the light of a simple alien, 
 she would have had no more hesitation in pro- 
 nouncing his destination than her pastor would ; 
 but place such a man before a simple rabbit-faced
 
 54 shoemakers' village. 
 
 and chicken-hearted woman Hke her in the capacity 
 of a suitor for her hand, and all is changed ! She 
 immediately begins to think, not only that what 
 she calls the uncovenanted mercies of God have a 
 very wide scope indeed, but she probably discerns 
 symptoms of an actual ' work of grace ' begun in 
 the poor man's heart. Of so much is charity — 
 shall we call it charity ? — capable, when it has had 
 a fillip from ordinary human feeling. 
 
 A more unlikely subject for 'a v/ork of grace' 
 than Jack Evans could hardly be conceived — I 
 mean that he was a person of whom, taking him as 
 he stood, you would never dream of predicating 
 that he was anywJiere within the distinctively Chris- 
 tian precincts. Yet, when you came to look close, 
 you v/ould perceive that Jack Evans, old Mr White 
 (Cherry's father), and Cherry herself were of the 
 same type, and that the peculiar kind of inappre-
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 55 
 
 hensiveness which made it inconceivable that they 
 would ever belong to Zoar, and really fit in, resulted 
 from qualities of mind and heart which ran through 
 them all. Neither of them could catch an ab- 
 straction ; or cared to ask reasons ; or (consequently) 
 entered into differences of creed. All three were, 
 primarily, human. In Jack Evans the humanity 
 was little more than a kind of gregariousness ; but 
 even in him it was strong, utterly inexclusive, and 
 capable of being raised, under strong excitement, to 
 the ;/*^ power. In old Mr White, the same type 
 reappeared, only the gregariousness had become a 
 more domestic feeling, and was less disturbed in 
 its movements by a strong physical constitution 
 ever seeking outlets : besides that, in White's case 
 there was a simpler natural reverence and less intel- 
 lectual vivacity of any kind. In Cherry White you 
 have once more the same type, with all its good
 
 56 shoemakers' village. 
 
 sunned into tropical warmth, and all that is really 
 bad in it sunned away. In a creature like her, 
 the mere human feeling, the instinct that takes hold 
 of other natures, is so strong as by itself alone to 
 beautify the character, and lift it by main force out 
 of the sphere of special criticism. Then there is 
 the unquestioning, childlike instinct which, in such 
 natures, lays hold, too, of earth, air, and skies, 
 as if they belonged to it — which is, in fact, at 
 home in the world, and takes the Divine good- 
 ness as a matter of course, without argument. 
 And now, although we discern (what, however, 
 Cherry's mother never could have discerned, nor 
 the pastor at Zoar, nor the deacons) that Cherry 
 never could be at home at Zoar, understand 
 its people or be understood of them, we clearly 
 discern that a nature of this kind may be very 
 near to God, and but let us not anticipate.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A SHORT distance across the fields from the 
 Village, and in a situation which might not 
 unjustly have been advertised as ' salubrious,' if 
 Miss Russett, the lady-principal, had ever ad- 
 vertised, stood the Acacias, a ladies' school of high 
 rank, containing about fifty young ladies. For 
 reasons and in ways which will appear in their 
 place. Cherry had many opportunities of both 
 learning and mislearning different things from the 
 young ladies at the Acacias, and one of the things 
 she had learnt was keeping a diary. In this diary 
 she used to record startling events, and passing
 
 58 shoemakers' village. 
 
 and permanent aspirations and reflections, and 
 always with a certain stateliness, or at least con- 
 sciousness, in the style, which seemed to suppose 
 a listener or a reader. The fly-leaf was inscribed 
 by Cherry with the word * Diary ' in as good 
 ornamental print as she could manage to produce, 
 the black being shaded with red, and a small white 
 glass bead stuck in the middle of each letter, where 
 the break occurred, after the manner of ornamental 
 writing and printing. Besides this there was a 
 hodge-podge hortus-siccus of southernwood, rose- 
 leaf, and lavender ; and a riband of blue sarsenet 
 to keep the place. Underneath the word Diary 
 had originally been written — 
 
 ' Cherry White is my name, 
 England is my nation, 
 Shoemakers' Village is my dwelling-place, 
 And Christ is my salvation ; ' 
 
 but this legend was now obscure, for Cheriy had
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 59 
 
 scratched it out as well as she could, upon ob- 
 serving that Miss Russett's girls did not use to 
 have such inscriptions in their diaries. One of 
 her entries I shall now, as the Scotch say, con- 
 descend upon. It was as follows : — 'Thursday. A 
 most mysterious enigma has occurred in our 
 locality. A gentleman to whom Mrs Branch (a 
 very religious person who keeps a pastrycook's) 
 had sold a stale pie, has disappeared in a remark- 
 able manner. She requested me to follow him, 
 but as the night was very wet, I deputed Mr 
 Woods to undertake the task. Our efforts were 
 unsuccessful, and Mrs Branch has been ill ever 
 since. Mother says she has a very tender con- 
 science, and that they prayed for her at chapel last 
 Sunday. When they pray for a female, they 
 always call her tJdne heuidviaid. A pretty hand- 
 maid Mrs Branch would make ! But to pursue ouv
 
 6o shoemakers' village. 
 
 subject. Mr Embler, the pastor, has been to pray 
 with her ; and she says if she could see the hand 
 of the Lord in it, she would be at peace, but that 
 he hides his face. Anybody would think she had 
 done something very wicked. I took her some 
 flowers from my friend Miss Russett yesterday, but 
 she is not one to see much in the beauties of nature. 
 And now to return to this most remarkable enigma. 
 On the night of this event. Captain Boldero, the 
 drill-master at the Acacias, stayed late because 
 of the heavy rain, but was at last compelled to take 
 his departure, and it is stated tha.t he stumbled over 
 the form of a man lying prostrate on the steps at 
 the side gate. Captain Boldero was not at his 
 post to-day, and some of the young ladies with 
 whom I am on terms of intimacy, were much 
 disappointed at missing their usual drill. It is 
 very amusing when the first stiffness has gone off,
 
 shoemakers' village. 6r 
 
 but the Captain is very strict. His manners are 
 such that I have sometimes felt if he had been of 
 a suitable age I could have loved him. Mr Woods 
 states that there is a bill up at the police-station 
 describing a body found dead, and it is a man 
 of gentlemanly appearance, but in shabby attire. 
 But till the usual steps have been taken, we shall 
 not know whether this is the corpse of the stranger. 
 Thus this remarkable affair remains shrouded in 
 mystery.' 
 
 This record is written with more than Cherry's 
 usual care and dignity (though her zuritten style 
 was always much better than you would expect), 
 as befitted the importance of the occasion. Nobody 
 could have more of the full-dress instinct than 
 Cherry ; though she was, until comparatively late 
 in her young life, habitually untidy in her per- 
 sonal appearance, except on state occasions — to
 
 62 shoemakers' village. 
 
 the height of which she could invariably rise at 
 once. 
 
 Her diary, for example, was written upon in- 
 nocent stilts of imagination, and there was no 
 practical meaning whatever in that hinted passion 
 for Captain Boldero. A passion for Boldero ! It 
 gives me a turn to think what he would have felt 
 if he had read such an entry in a girl's diary — even 
 in the diary of an inscrutable child-woman like 
 Tomboy. He was no more a captain than I am, 
 but he had had scraps of military experience, and 
 he was a stiff, handsome figure, standing six feet 
 and a half with ease, and whiskers of the most 
 threatening size and adjustment. Yet, underneath 
 that shining bald head of his, with its two side- 
 ridges of shiny white hair, lay one of the most 
 timid and bashful of brains. Though he appeared 
 to be, and evidently was, able to face a troop] of
 
 shoemakers' village. 63 
 
 girls, and make them right-about-face and set up 
 their backs, yet I am sure it was only the number 
 and the military associations that enabled him to 
 go through it ; and to face one woman for anything 
 like an interview was an effort for which he must 
 always have braced himself by some artificial 
 means — so bashful was he when ' the ladies ' — as 
 he used with bated breath to call them — were in 
 question. 
 
 Boldero was one of the least lucky members of 
 a somewhat unlucky family. During his youth 
 and early manhood, he had always taken hold of 
 facts with his left hand, and had never got on. All 
 he undertook failed. If he had not been so shy, his 
 handsome face and figure might, perhaps, have 
 made his fortune, as men count of fortune ; but I 
 don't believe he ever did so much as fairly look a 
 woman in the face. Yet he was sociable enough
 
 64 shoemakers' village. 
 
 and free enough with men. At last, something or 
 somebody whispered him that if he were to go and 
 enhst, his relations might ^ do something ' for him. 
 In a spirit of such mild vindictiveness as he was 
 capable of he took this advice — twice. Twice was 
 he bought off — twice was something done for him. 
 The third time his friends began to feel the ab- 
 surdity of a great hulking handsome fellow making 
 a market-article of his person in this way ; and 
 they left things to take their course. 
 
 After missing sight of him for some years, I 
 came across him again at Miss Russett's. We 
 had some casual conversation, and then, stepping 
 aside with me into the corner of the ante-room in 
 which we were standing, he suddenly faltered in 
 his talk. Evidently he had something special 
 to say. He looked furtively at me from under 
 his rather shaggy eyebrows, and endeavoured
 
 shoemakers' village. 65 
 
 to put on a wicked expression of countenance. 
 ' I've got something to tell you,' said he, in an 
 emphatic half-whisper, straightening his back, and 
 rubbing his hands together, as if he had just made 
 a good bargain. 
 
 * Oh, have you ? ' said I ; * what is it ? ' 
 ' Don't you know ? ' 
 
 ' No.' 
 
 ' You do now ! ' — and he made a half-abortive 
 attempt to wink. 
 
 * Really, I don't,' said I ; ' tell me,' — winking 
 back, to encourage him. 
 
 ' Well, it's something — sexual.' 
 
 As Boldero whispered this maladroit word — the 
 mal-adroitness of which I knew very well to be the 
 nure result of his bashfulness — he ' retired up ' 
 closer to the wall of the room. Glooms of guilt 
 deepened and deepened in his large eyes ; and a 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 shoemakers' village. 
 
 vivid red blush suffused his face. His bald head 
 
 v/as crimson between the white ridges. He stood 
 
 like one who waited for his doom. 
 
 ' Oh, indeed,' said I, gaily, ' I'm as glad as glad 
 
 can be. What is it ? Are you married ? ' 
 
 ' No ! ' said he, brightening up and rubbing his 
 hands again ; ' but I've formed an attachment.' 
 
 And then, laughing a harmless triumphant 
 lausrh, which broadened his codfish mouth and 
 showed all his huge white teeth, he shook hands 
 warmly, and bade me good-bye. He thought he 
 had gone far enough for one time. And I knew I 
 should pretty certainly have to wait for more in- 
 formation until he chose to give it ; for nobody 
 would ever dream of such a thing as surprising him 
 in conversation with the ' object ' of his ' attach- 
 ment,' whoever she might be. If Boldero had been 
 engaged to Miranda on Prospero's island, Prospero
 
 shoemakers' village. 67 
 
 might safely have spared his admonitions and 
 H^nr'iciations. I don't believe he would ever have 
 dared to play at chess with her, even in a dream. 
 He would have reared for himself a hut on the 
 extreme edge of the island, and called once a 
 month, when he was quite sure Prospero was at 
 home.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TT was in the capacity of half-tutor, half-lecturer 
 at the Acacias, that I first became acquainted 
 with Shoemakers' Village at all. I was invited 
 by Miss Russett, the principal of the establishment, 
 to deliver some courses of lectures upon Modern 
 Literature, and, accepting the invitation, I got 
 through my engagements for a term or two pretty 
 successfully ; but was quite unable to go on with 
 that sort of thing. You would never guess the 
 reason, though, if you were to try for a thousand 
 and one nights. It was my modesty ; or perhaps 
 I should say, my humility.
 
 shoemakers' village. 69 
 
 Never, never shall I forget my first entry into 
 the lecture-room at the Acacias. It was a long, 
 well-lighted hall, with benches in rows of three 
 deep all along the sides ; at the upper end a 
 pulpit or raised desk for the lecturer, and at the 
 left-hand of that, a sort of curule chair for Miss 
 Russett, who sat there like a conscript mother, if 
 there is such a thing, good-humouredly beaming 
 out upon everybody ; with her back well up, and 
 that pouter-pigeon bosom of hers well supported or 
 shoved up in a tight-fitting dove-coloured silk, over 
 which hung the chain of her watch in a thin ser- 
 pentine golden column. Seated along the benches 
 were, of course, all the young ladies — oh ! what a 
 flower-bed of girls ! — it makes me shrink into my- 
 self only to recall it to mind. Not that I have a 
 single picture of a separate face before me — I never 
 summoned courage to set up my mental photo-
 
 70 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 graphic apparatus against a single one of those 
 certainly youthful, and probably agreeable, not to 
 say lovely, countenances. I have, indeed, a sort 
 of general impression of a black blot in the middle 
 of the front row on the left hand — that was the 
 face of Miss Golightly, the young African lady who 
 was being educated for some exalted position on 
 the Gold Coast — but that is my only portrait. 
 The first time I entered that hall to deliver 
 my weekly — or was it bi-weekly .? — lecture, I was 
 as much thrown back as if the sea itself had broken 
 down an embankment, and made an unexpected 
 rush at me, with the usual surge of sound. For 
 the sweet creatures all rose as one man — I mean 
 as one parlour-boarder — to receive the lecturer ; 
 and the rustle of their dresses, first as they got up 
 from their seats, and then as they sat down again 
 adjusting their skirts, was an awful sound — not at
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 all unlike that of the sea on the shingles, in fact. 
 I wished the floor of the lecture-room would open 
 and swallow me up ; but it did not ; and I had to 
 walk all up that long gangway of girls to my 
 pulpit, the cynosure, or the Cymon, of all those 
 scrutinizing eyes. How sweetly stupid I must 
 have looked ! Nor did Miss Russett's manner do 
 anything to reassure me ; for although the gayest 
 of old maids out of school hours, she was a very 
 conscript-motherly person in school hours ; and the 
 lecture v/as a sort of public occasion which de- 
 manded rather more solemnity and dignity than 
 usual. However, bowing formally to ]\Iiss Russett, 
 I ascended the pulpit, and then made, or endeavour- 
 ed to make, a bow to the young ladies, devoutly 
 hoping that I had, for the moment, George the 
 Fourth's faculty of giving the most general 
 bow any number of particular applications. Then
 
 72 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 I produced my notes and began to speak — with, of 
 course, the usual experience of bashful speakers ; 
 that is to say, I felt as if my own voice was some- 
 body else's; or that I had come to hear myself 
 deliver a lecture. If it had been the etiquette of 
 the place for the young creatures to applaud, or 
 even to hiss, or in any way to express approbation 
 or disapprobation, it would have been pleasanter for 
 me. But ladies never clap, or stamp, or say hear, 
 hear ! or oh, oh ! or question, question ! in public, I 
 believe ; and besides. Miss Russett's girls were, 
 of course, sitting there in the character of pupils, 
 and had no right to express any opinion of what 
 they were told. So I had to get through my task 
 somehow, and I did ; and when I told a professor, 
 who was delivering another and a contemporaneous 
 course at the Acacias, that my periodical hour there 
 was the most awful hour I ever went throu;:rh in
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 73 
 
 all my life, he laughed at me, and assured me he 
 enjoyed immensely the homage of so miany fair 
 young creatures, all waiting upon the wisdom of his 
 professorial lips. Now I had the malice to suggest 
 to this surely over-confident professor that he had 
 no means of k/iozai/i£- tha.t there was any homage in 
 the case, and that it was quite possible those inno- 
 cent maidens laughed at him when his back was 
 turned — and he never forgave me. To his male- 
 ficent influence upon Miss Russett, added to a slight 
 indiscretion of my own, I attribute the fact that I 
 never w^as invited to deliver a third course of lec- 
 tures at the Acacias. The little indiscretion was 
 this. The fact is, being in a room with so many 
 women — a lonely, helpless gentleman — (think of 
 the Cerebration !) — I used to acquire a tone of feel- 
 ing which (with the leave of the scientific etymolo- 
 gist) must be called hysterical. This exhibited itself
 
 74 shoemakers' village. 
 
 in a tendency to laugh at everything which furnished 
 the sHghtest pretext for a smile. That tendency 
 I managed to control until one day, when I was 
 speaking of the Scandinavians, and had to pro- 
 nounce the name of Regner Hairybreeches, I burst 
 out laughing at the very word Hairybreeches. 
 There was no echo ; not one of those young women 
 had the humane courage to laugh too. At Miss 
 Russett I did not dare to steal even the most 
 furtive glance. The expression of her countenance 
 at that moment must have been something 
 awful. 
 
 Miss Russett was a plump, rosy-faced, com.mand- 
 ing lady ; a lady wath a presence, w4io laughed wath 
 her bust in such a decided and conspicuous manner 
 that the eyes of attentive little children were always 
 fascinated with the manner in w-hich her gold 
 chain used to slide about betw^een her neck and
 
 SHOEISIAKERS VILLAGE. 75 
 
 her waist when the deep silk valley was shaken 
 with merriment. And, indeed, Miss Russett would 
 laugh heartily at a very simple joke ; a practical 
 joke, if innocent, w^ould do as well as any. 
 To laugh at her even was quite safe. ' Ah 
 well, my dear,' she would say, ' I dare say now 
 you'd cry a little for me, if I were to die ; 
 so why shouldn't you have a laugh out of me 
 noiv ? ' 
 
 But dying was the last thing Miss Russett 
 thought of : she would not even consent to get old. 
 Just at a time when her really over-blown maturity 
 was pronounced by watchful connoisseurs to be on 
 the verge of showing rusty, like a hollyhock on the 
 turn, she surprised all her friends by sickening with 
 an eminently juvenile complaint, after which, though 
 everybody said she would die, she came out younger 
 and more blooming than ever. But while she was
 
 76 SHOEMAKERS'VILLAGE. 
 
 yet in the mill, one of the smallest and simplest of 
 the younger boarders asked an elder friend with 
 whom she * chummed ' in bed — 
 
 ' Shall we all be forced to cry, dear, if Miss Rus- 
 sett dies ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, of course,' answered the monitress, who 
 had confidence in her own resources as a 
 mourner. 
 
 This seemed very sad to the little maid : as I 
 know I used to feel myself, when a child, that the 
 obligation to cry for the loss of one's connections 
 was a sort of social tax which pressed with unfair 
 incidence upon the younger branches. The con- 
 sequence was that this fair little creature went 
 about asking advice what to do, in case of in- 
 capacity to weep on the day of the anticipated 
 funeral. 
 
 ' Oh, take and rub your eyes with an onion ! '
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 77 
 
 said an impatient, white-shouldered cynic with 
 auburn curls — who, to speak truth, ought to have 
 know^n better. However, the child did procure 
 an onion, and hid it away in her ' locker,' all in 
 readiness for the dreaded exigency. 
 
 When Miss Russett came back into society again 
 after her attack of the measles, people were glad to 
 see her, but were not a little surprised to be pre- 
 sented with fresh cards, on which Miss Russett was 
 decisively written down by the engraver in fine bold 
 characters as Mrs Russett. 
 
 ' My dear ! ' said she, laughing out like a rising 
 sun in June ; ' my dear ! I thought, after the measles 
 at my age, I oii^/U to be called Mrs if ever anybod}' 
 ought ! ' 
 
 It seems as if it must be impossible to ex- 
 plain this; but, upon being pressed, Mrs Russett 
 seemed, on the other hand, astonished that
 
 78 shoemakers' village. 
 
 any one should want an explanation. The 
 rationale of her own procedure was quite obvious 
 to herself. 
 
 * What for, my dear } Why, because I suppose 
 I'm out of my childhood now, if ever anybody 
 
 was 
 
 I ' 
 
 Nobody dared to suggest that the next thing was 
 to go into her teens. Nor did anybody dare to 
 joke her about the Mrs. Why should they have 
 done so "i Hannah More was Mrs, was she 
 not, at about the time when the Lyrical Bal- 
 lads were published } As for marriage, Christina 
 Russett never meddled with the subject at all ; her 
 sentiments about matrimony were unknown, only 
 she was presumed to regard it with disfavour, be- 
 cause she always spoke up for Platonic attachments. 
 Not that they formed any portion of the programme 
 at the Acacias.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 79 
 
 The innocent little girl who hid the onion in the 
 locker against the day of IvIibS Russett's funeral, 
 stood in extreme terror of the Gold Coast. 
 
 Now the Gold Coast, who to her mind was not a 
 human entity, whose name she always spelt in her 
 thoughts in capital letters, with the definite article 
 going first, to indicate that It was One, like, say, 
 the Sphinx, or the Kraken — this Gold Coast was 
 only a black girl, sent over to the Acacias from the 
 v/est coast of Africa to be educated. Her father 
 was a blackamoor potentate in some colony — he 
 may have been president of Liberia for what I 
 know — and no expense was spared in accomplish- 
 ments, and all the branches. All her life, how- 
 ever, she remained a loud, gawky, ignorant, in- 
 congruous blackamoor. Why she should have 
 been educated at the Acacias is surely rather 
 mysterious. What did she want with the use of
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 the globes ? She ought to have been running wild 
 in a grove of palms, with a cockatoo on her wrist, a 
 ring in her nose, and a fig-leaf or two for attire, 
 instead of the silks and satins she wore in England. 
 But her great joy was to dress altogether in white. 
 For some years after she came to the Acacias she 
 was the terror of Miss Russett and her school- 
 fellows. Nobody was safe, nothing was safe, from 
 her monkey-tricks. To exhibit any vexation at 
 having books, drawings, or any other little school- 
 girl stores meddled with by this shiny-faced, woolly- 
 headed barbarian of a girl was only to make sure 
 of finding the trick, whatever it was, repeated at an 
 early opportunity, with aggravations. Nor was it 
 ever know^n that the Gold Coast was caught in the 
 fact. When she could lay hold of any other girl's 
 pomatum or hair-oil, she would empty the whole of 
 it upon her own woolly head, till her ears and her
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 very shoulders dripped with grease, and then she 
 would jump about the place, butting at the other 
 girls. Her favourite amusement, however, was 
 hiding at the top of the bed, and then suddenly 
 dropping, head foremost, down the bed-post. Or 
 she would get to the top of a high book-case or 
 other seemingly inaccessible place, and from her 
 elevation pounce suddenly upon the passer-by. 
 To turn head over heels during school-time — under 
 pretence of falling off the form — was a common 
 trick with her. As she grew older, she became so 
 fond of dress, and of making experiments in dress, 
 that not a girl at the Acacias felt her things were 
 safe. ' Oh, Miss Russett, Miss Golightly has been 
 making faces in my best white bonnet, and I shall 
 hate it now,' — that was the sort of complaint poor 
 Miss Russett had to hear half-a-dozcn times a 
 week. Before going out for a walk with the other 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 shoemakers' village. 
 
 young ladies, she had always to be carefully and 
 separately inspected, to see that she had not in 
 some wholly unlooked for manner made an 'object ' 
 of herself ; and not a young lady at the Acacias 
 felt it a cheerful thing when it came to her turn to 
 pair off with the Gold Coast for the daily pro- 
 menade.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A PLACE like Shoemakers' Village is sure to be 
 a Paradise of Widows, including grass-widows; 
 but Cherry White's mother was a widow of the 
 most respectable order in her rank of life. The 
 late Mr White had been a waiter — a subdued, 
 colourless sort of man, who always walked with 
 the noiseless step of a gentleman's-gentleman, 
 wearing very well-polished shoes (never by any 
 chance boots) and white Berlin gloves — except 
 on high days and holidays, when he put on a 
 pair of half-rusty black kid, incalculably old. In 
 his little parlour window was the framcd-and-
 
 84 shoemakers' village. 
 
 glazed announcement — * R. "White, waiter. Dinner 
 and evening parties attended. Carpets beat. 
 Music provided on the shortest notice.' He was 
 himself a fiddler, and, in the late Sunday evenings, 
 would perform ' sacred pieces ' in the parlour, to 
 the great entertainment of the Village boys and 
 girls, who used to assemble round the window, and 
 listen till they got ' The Fall of Babylon ' by heart ; 
 some of the bolder spirits joining in chorus when 
 they caught the half-quavering soprano of Mrs 
 White striking up — as she sometimes felt encour- 
 aged to do (though White rather slighted her sing- 
 ing faculties) — the 'words' of the music — 
 
 * Thus sud-den-ly shall Ba-bel fall, 
 And ne-ver more be found at all ! ' 
 
 But this was usually the signal for the cessation of 
 the performance. The lodger — for small as the 
 house was, there was a lodger, a fat, unmarried
 
 shoemakers' village. 85 
 
 monthly nurse — would come tearing down-stairs, 
 and make a dispersive rush at the children ; and 
 White, meek as he was, would say — 
 
 * My dear, you sing as if you was spelling it. It 
 is not staccato till you come to \ki^ forte passages.' 
 
 *Ah, well, my dear,' says Mrs White, with a 
 certain devout asperity, ' a poor sinner can sing 
 the song of Moses and the Lamb without knowing 
 the gammuck, thank the Lord.' 
 
 ' Gamut, my love,' says White : who had been 
 ' brought up to the Church,' as he always said ; and 
 had only a distant apprehension of what he distin- 
 guished as ' persuasions ; ' such as that of the 
 Particular Baptists, to whom Mrs Wliite adhered. 
 Roman Catholics, indeed, he conceived of as people 
 who wished to blow up ' the government,' and burn 
 Protestants in Smithficld ; of them he felt a remote 
 and gloomy horror, which was vaguely associated
 
 86 shoemakers' village. 
 
 in his mind with Guy Fawkes, and King Charles 
 the Martyr ; but of * persuasions ' he thought with 
 mild tolerant wonder, just as he thought of freaks of 
 nature, such as the Pig-faced Lady and the Extra- 
 ordinary Thin Man, who had flourished in his child- 
 hood. Quakers were an exception, however. 
 There were not many of them ; and he regarded 
 them as he did a quaint inexplicable piece of carv- 
 ing — an elaborate Swiss toy, or the griflin's-head 
 over a door-knocker. Generally, indeed, he was un- 
 able to comprehend how anybody could be so un- 
 sociable as to differ from his neighbours, or depart 
 from any established way. One autumn night, 
 when nothing appeared to threaten extreme cold, he 
 walked out, as usual, with his pumps and his white 
 necktie in a blue bag, to attend a party at a dis- 
 tance ; and, having omitted to bring his great coat 
 with him, he caught cold in the suddenly-chilled
 
 shoemakers' village. 87 
 
 night air, and died of it in a very short time. Mrs 
 White, of course, stuck to Zoar, but Tomboy ' took 
 after her father,' and always went to church. It 
 was found, at the last, that White had actually ac- 
 cumulated a little money, and this gave the widow 
 time to turn, and she and Cherry soon gathered 
 round them a little dress-making business, that paid 
 them tolerably well. 
 
 Tomboy, though the cause, or at least the means, 
 of dressiness in others, was not herself dressy ; she 
 was one of the most naive, not to say gauche, one 
 of the least adorned, not to say untidy, child- 
 women (and whether she was child or woman was 
 not always obvious) that ever lived. Cherry was a 
 free-spoken, long-limbed girl, with light brown 
 hair, that lay in crisp, boyish curls all round her 
 head ; with the bold, decided movements of a boy, 
 but with a moon-like forehead, and low-bent, grey-
 
 8S shoemakers' village. 
 
 blue eyes, such as no boy ever yet was born with, 
 except by a fluke. She had, unquestionably, the 
 woman's heart, for, with her mother's consent and 
 help, she had adopted and brought up a poor little 
 waif of a boy, who had dropped from the clouds 
 into Shoemakers' Village one cold night in a bundle, 
 and was provisionally, and, indeed, for some years, 
 called Timothy. The Villagers were great at 
 giving queer names to people, and there was much 
 hesitation in affixing the obvious and natural 
 surname of White to the Christian name of 
 Timothy, which had been affixed to this little boy. 
 There was, I believe, a double superstition about 
 it. First, it was vaguely supposed that he might 
 be claimed by his relations, and so get a 
 proper surname ; and, secondly, there was a still 
 vaguer fancy that a surname might in time be 
 * developed ' out of the Timothy — that the right
 
 shoemakers' village, 89 
 
 word would be arrived at, so to speak, by natural 
 selection. The name Timothy was an inspiration 
 of Cherry's own. The child might be called hers : 
 for it was she who picked up the bundle in the 
 Village street, brought it home to her mother in 
 much excitement, hardly knovvdng whether there 
 was anything ' alive ' inside it or not ; and it was 
 she who insisted on keeping it, and bringing it up. 
 It was she, too, who happened to give it its first 
 food under her mother's roof; and it came by 
 its name in this wise. It appeared to Tomboy 
 to be rather slack in taking the spoon, and, 
 by way of influencing it to receive its milk and 
 water at a more rapid rate, she made a dash at its 
 little mouth with the spoon, and exclaimed, by way 
 of encouragement, rebuke, and stimulation — 
 
 ' Now then, Timothy ! ' and this she said with 
 a rapid fortc% crescendo movement which made
 
 90 shoemakers' village. 
 
 her mother laugh, and also with a jerk which spilt 
 the milk on the little one's forehead. 
 
 ' Well, mother,' says Cherry, gaily, ' I've chris- 
 tened him at all events.' And Timothy being a dis- 
 tinctive name, and a Scriptural one, it was retained 
 as the appellative of this mite, who, when other- 
 wise described, was always called ' Tomboy's baby.' 
 Alliteration being a strong tendency of the Vil- 
 lagers, some of the looser sort manifested a strong 
 inchnation to call the baby Timothy Trot ; but by 
 the more superstitious and respectable Villagers 
 this was rather frowned upon as a sort of ribaldry 
 when applied to a child with such a peculiar and 
 mysterious history. 
 
 Tomboy's quick-sightedness in finding the child, 
 her zeal in bringing it safe to shelter, and her 
 resolute care of it ever since, had given her a 
 distinguished position in Shoemakers' Village, and
 
 shoemakers' village. 91 
 
 thrown into the shade certain unfeminine quaHties 
 for which she was notorious, and for which, indeed, 
 she was still much criticised by the more sedate 
 and genteel public opinion of the Village. But it 
 was only a very select few who were aware that 
 there were moments in Cherry's inner life when 
 Timothy presented himself to her imagination as 
 an Incumbrance ! How could it be other^vise with 
 a girl who had waking visions of eloping with a 
 Prince, and following him to the Battle-field dis- 
 guised as a Page ? 
 
 I was in possession of this secret about the 
 Prince long before I even spoke to Cherry, or knew 
 her name. The moment I set eyes on her I con- 
 ceived a cloud-land passion for her, just as Camp- 
 bell did for the little girl he saw in the Park 
 one day and tried, by advertisements, to get an- 
 other glimpse of The first time I ever saw
 
 92 shoemakers' village. 
 
 Tomboy she was taking a great bite out of an apple, 
 so that her mouth was very much stretched ; and 
 indeed scarcely anything could be less elegant than 
 her whole attitude and appearance. How rough 
 her hair was ! how hot she looked ! How flat she 
 was in the back, from the waist downwards ; 
 just like the wife of Noah in a child's toy ark ! Of 
 her boots I am ashamed, and also puzzled, to speak 
 at all — they were laced ad libitum, and I am sure 
 they had ' sprigs ' at the soles and heels, so that 
 they made my rough little lady-love stand high. 
 I never went with her and her mother to get her 
 measured for a pair, but I know as well as possible 
 what the old girl would say to the shoe-man : — 
 
 ' Now, you know, you must put a fewish sprigs 
 in the soles and heels ; because she's always on her 
 feet, except when she's in bed ; and make 'em full 
 large, for she grows like marrows.'
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 93 
 
 The marrow was much cultivated in the Village ; 
 and there is scarcely a handsomer sight, I think, 
 than that yellow trumpet flower with the dew on 
 it in a morning sun. 
 
 Biting her apple with half-unconscious zest, and 
 showing as she did so teeth as Vv^iite and clean as 
 a baby's, my Tomboy stood looking in at the 
 w^indow of a small shop in the Village. It was 
 half toy-shop and half stationer's ; and her great 
 grey-blue eyes were fixed upon a * character,' all 
 ready tinselled and dressed up in velvet and satin 
 for the theatrical youth of the Village to worship. 
 It was a Prince ! Miss Somebody as Prince Some- 
 thing in the Enchanted Everything and Everyone ! 
 The Prince, for tinsel is mighty, had silver legs and 
 golden spurs, and helmet of shining steel ; his tunic 
 was glossy blue satin, his waistbelt shone with 
 jewellery; round his neck was a silver hunting
 
 94 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 horn, which swung free from a chain of gold ; and 
 in the distance was a briUiantly-saddled incon- 
 ceivable pony, arching his neck, and pawing the 
 ground, like an undertaker's horse at a funeral. 
 
 This beautiful Prince was Tomboy's first love. 
 Attracted by the flat, energetic back, the rough 
 hair, the unfashionable get-up of the girl, and, I 
 confess it, the solid shapely legs, discovered by her 
 outgrown skirts, I went up to the window, and 
 furtively watched the child-woman with the apple. 
 I discerned her passion for the Prince, and fell 
 hopelessly in love with her myself. My passion 
 formed a thousand pictures directly. 
 
 How I should like to be wrecked on a desert 
 island, with this apple-cheeked, great, growing doll 
 of a girl ! I would build her a palace of a hut 
 within call of my own, and wait on her will as if 
 she were an empress or better. How I_ should
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 95 
 
 delight to watch the way in which she took the 
 endless girdling ocean ; the sunrise, the sunset, the 
 stars like drops of light ; the flamingo in the 
 creek, the green-red parrot in the wood, and the 
 savages that would be sure one day to visit us 
 in a canoe ! How pleasant it would be to build 
 a boat, and row her round the island now and 
 then ! How nice to listen to her wise simplicities, 
 and unabashed wonderings, and see her grow 
 strong and lithe, sprinkled with the foam of the 
 clean fresh sea, and stained, like a berry, by the 
 friendly familiar sun ! 
 
 Or, again. How I should like to play prince to 
 her. Conceive it. I go into the little shop, buy 
 the tinselled ' character ' for a pattern, and, having 
 recourse to a theatrical wardrobe shop, got myself 
 up exactly like. Then, at some improbable 
 moment, I ride up to Tomboy's mother's door, and
 
 g6 shoemakers' village. 
 
 saying, 'What ho, my love ! within there ! ' beckon 
 her forth, Hft her to the saddle-tree in front of me, 
 and so away, away, to the nearest railway station, 
 where I put the pony into a box, and take a first- 
 class ticket to the Shetland Isles for Tomboy 
 and me ! 
 
 One of the strongest of Cherry's early ambitions 
 was, undoubtedly, to be a robber's wife ; to live in 
 a cave under-ground, with a trap-door to it, grown 
 over with grass, and v/ith subterranean passages by 
 means of which she might issue at will into the 
 open of the surrounding country. Where this 
 country should be was of no consequence — Cherry 
 never thought about that, any more than she 
 thought about the functions of a wife. Of these 
 she had so little idea that her cherished notion 
 was, in truth, that of being the wife of the robbers 
 — not of any robber in particular, but of the whole
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 97 
 
 band, captain, lieutenant, 'pioneers and all' Her 
 chief duty would be to bind up sword-cuts ; to 
 listen at the trap-door for the tramp of the horses' 
 feet upon the return of an expedition ; to prepare 
 savoury messes — they were to be savoury^ mind, 
 with plenty of steam — in a great four-legged 
 caldron ; and, now and then when the band were 
 on tramp, and her favourite bandit in danger, to 
 throw herself between him and the butt-end of a 
 blunderbuss, saying, with imperious gesture, 'Vile 
 hound ! would you strike a female ? ' This Cherry 
 had learnt in the London Jonrnal. 
 
 If these dehghtful visions ever varied, it was 
 when Cherry imagined herself a Smuggler's Bride, 
 residing in a cleft of the rock like a scabird. But 
 she hated drunkenness, and had a vague idea — 
 derived from a picture entitled * Smugglers Carous- 
 ing,' with a companion picture called ' Smugglers 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 shoemakers' village. 
 
 Surprised,' — that smugglers drank all the spirits 
 they 'got hold of, so that she hardly relished them 
 as well as she did robbers. 
 
 At the time at which I first knew her, too, Cherry 
 White kept a 'raculum, for which she was much 
 teased by that dull, heavy, epileptic, spiteful Melia 
 Luckin. ' Cherry's proud this morning ! She's 
 been dipping in her 'raculum, and the Prince is 
 coming ! ' Now the 'raculum was Napoleon's Cele- 
 brated Oraculum, or Book of Fate, a fortune-telling 
 manual, now out of fashion, but of which a tattered 
 copy, greased and pin-pricked (through the dip- 
 ping in the mysteriously dotted Magic Wheel), 
 had descended to Cherry through a sort of Jacob's 
 ladder of housemaids, who, having got married, had 
 no further use for the 'raculum, and politely passed 
 it on to anxious and revering virgins. It was well 
 known, through the kind intervention of Melia
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 99 
 
 Luckin, to all the Village that Cherry had a 
 'raculum, and consulted it in secret ! She kept it 
 in a small wooden box under her bed, along with a 
 scent bottle in which the stopper had long been 
 fixed ; a franc piece, which she considered a great 
 curiosity ; a torn sheet of printed music, which she 
 used to look at with awe and desire ; and a very 
 well thumbed instruction book for the concertina, 
 which she hoped some day to match with an 
 instrument and apply to its proper use, in learning 
 to play. But besides these maidenly trifles, Cherry 
 White had once, with less than her usual discretion, 
 displayed to a confidential friend — a gorgeously 
 tinselled Character — nothing less than a Prince ! 
 Indeed he was so labelled. And the quick deduct- 
 ive genius of the confidential but uncommunicative 
 friend, assisted by the malice of that ugly little 
 female avvocato del diavolo, Amelia Luckin, had
 
 lOO SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 easily reached the conclusion that \vhen Cherry 
 shut her nice large eyes and dipped with a pin in 
 the Magic Wheel of the 'raculum for an answer to 
 the question, Shall I obtain my wish ? — she wished 
 for a Prince ! 
 
 This may not be an improper place for saying 
 something upon the etiquette or physiology of 
 sweethearting, in the neighbourhood which so well 
 knew Tomboy. 
 
 The chief, or, at all events, the most obvious, 
 elements of love-making in Shoemakers' Village 
 were cheap cigars, pomatum, and concertinas. 
 Now and then, here and there, an enam^oured 
 couple, true to the natural instincts of young affec- 
 tion, did their billing and cooing in secluded streets 
 that led off into the fields ; but the pavements 
 were so bad in streets of that kind that it was only 
 the infatuated pairs who were ready to undergo the
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. lOI 
 
 inconvenience of walking there. The sweetheart- 
 ing youth of the Village for the most part preferred 
 to transact their billing and cooing in the nearest 
 large populous street; the town, as it was called. 
 On a fine, or half fine, Sunday evening, this street 
 was the appointed promenade of our striplings and 
 sliplings ; hobbledehoys and damsels. They went 
 at it pretty early in the Village : I have known a 
 lass of eleven have a young man ; thirteen was 
 cojnme-il-faut ; a girl who at fourteen had no 
 followers was considerably behind the destiny of 
 woman. The youths began when they pleased : 
 it was entirely a question of impudence and coat- 
 tails ; sweethearting in a jacket is in most parts 
 counted abnormal. But when Cherry was taunted 
 with the fact that one of her admirers had a 
 jacket on, she took his part with great spirit. 
 
 * I should be ashamed, if I was you,' said a spite-
 
 I02 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 ful rival, ' to be seen talking to a boy like that, with 
 nothing to cover him but a jacket.' 
 
 ' Should you ? ' says Cherry ; * and I suppose you 
 never went out with a soldier } Talk about jackets ! 
 — if there's anything to laugh at in that, w^hat's 
 a soldier's back ? I call it a fright. How a woman 
 can be seen walking with a soldier is a phantom to 
 me ; with his clothes fitting him as if they'd been 
 glued to him.' 
 
 Naturally, the evening of Sunday was the great 
 courting-time, the Pervigiliitvt Veneris, in the 
 Village, when the signal went round — 
 
 ' Let those love now, who never loved before, 
 And those who always loved, now love the more ! ' 
 
 But the preparations began on the Saturday even- 
 ing. Then you might see the maidenhood of the 
 place, hanging in groups round the drapers' shops, 
 deep in council on the killing get-up for the
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I03 
 
 morrow. In the Village I have observed that It 
 takes four girls to buy one ribbon — such is the 
 gregariousness of the female population. Are girls 
 like that anywhere else ? The purchase of such 
 amatory necessaries as peppermint drops, ginger 
 lozenges, rose lozenges, and even cosinetiqiLC, might 
 be postponed till the morrow, for chemists' shops 
 open on Sunday, after morning church, you know. 
 But the great token of all that on the next day our 
 Village would sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or 
 with the tangles of Neasra's hair, was the prevalence 
 of curl-papers on the heads of the damsels. This 
 was quite a spectacle. Some women would no 
 more think of walking the streets with their hair in 
 paper than they would in a nightgown ; but our 
 young ladies were more frank and less scrupulous. 
 Nor do I believe the enamoured youth of the place 
 felt that there was any indelicacy in the practice.
 
 I04 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 Most of US would rather have the results in these 
 matters without seeing the process ; and even 
 where we must see, we ignore ; we take Venus as 
 she is, and assume that she has risen, all complete, 
 from the sea-foam. But the lover in the Village 
 must, I think, have looked upon all this preparation 
 as a compliment to himself, which made the display 
 natural and proper. So you might see the swains, 
 in knots, in their working dresses many of them, 
 furtively watching the beauties at a distance, as they 
 went about their shopping, their heads bedropped 
 with twists of Londoji Journal till there was more 
 paper than hair to be seen. 
 
 It is with a touch of masculine shyness that I 
 refer to cosmctique. What is it, and what is it for .? 
 You shall hear. On Sundays, and in general on 
 high days and holidays and all state occasions, a 
 change came over the eyebrows of the young
 
 shoemakers' village. 1C5 
 
 maidenhood of Shoemakers' Village. They were 
 rounder, thicker, darker, longer, every way more 
 defined. What did this ^ Speak it softly — the 
 cosmetiqiie. This is a black substance, in the nature 
 of pomatum, sold, hke chocolate, in little cakes 
 covered with ornamental paper : and with it the 
 eyebrows of the maiden are painted, arched, 
 deepened, and elongated. This is supposed to give 
 a Circassian expression to the countenance, and is 
 greatly admired. It had an enemy, however, in 
 the Village, namely, the sweet Amelia Luckin. 
 Her own eyebrows were thick enough for two, and 
 she resented, with her usual good-nature, the use 
 of this heightening toilet article by other girls. On 
 one occasion, when poor little Miss Salmon, who 
 had no beauty to spare, was sitting at tea with a 
 few other young ladies, with the shrimps, the 
 watercrcsses, and other delicacies spread for the
 
 io6 shoemakers' village. 
 
 expected Corydon, Miss Luckin, who had secretly 
 wetted her pocket-handkerchief, made a sudden 
 dash at Norah Salmon's eyebrows. 
 
 * Oh, my ! ' she exclaimed, ' what have you got on 
 your forehead } ' 
 
 * What is it ? ' says frightened Norah, 'is it a 
 spider ? ' 
 
 * Ya — a — h ! ' screamed the rest of the company 
 — it is high-polite in the Village to express sym- 
 pathy by screaming. In the mean while, Amelia 
 had gained her end ; she had, by scrubbing at 
 Norah's eyebrow, made a smudge upon her face 
 and forehead. By one of those rapid transitions of 
 feeling, in which very gregarious people are apt to 
 betray that their natures are not quite as deep as 
 they are fluent, the kind friends now laughed in 
 concert, as heartily as they had screamed just 
 before. But the story was solemnly hushed up, and
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 107 
 
 never generally known in the Village. The line 
 must be drawn somewhere — the maids of the 
 Village drew it at cosnietiqiie. Men might see their 
 curl papers, but there they must stop. It is gratify- 
 ing to be able to add that one of the young ladies 
 present on this occasion immediately volunteered 
 the loan of her own cosmetique, and that Miss 
 Salmon's Circassian cacJiet de bcaute was restored 
 before the appearance of her lover. 
 
 On a Sunday evening, when the lovers were out 
 in great force, perambulating the streets, the 
 neighbourhood positively smelt of pomatum ; the 
 whiff you got in passing some of these smart young 
 couples was almost overpowering. It is true there 
 was the smell of the cigars to vary it, or mix with 
 it ; but was that an improvement or an aggra- 
 vation ? And then there was the music. The 
 butcher-boy, or the news-boy, or the doctor's-boy,
 
 io8 shoemakers' village. 
 
 selected his corner, a little out of the main current 
 of the traffic, and there tossed his cheap concertina 
 backwards and forwards, like a pancake or a dump- 
 ling that had stuck to the hands, playing as well as 
 he could one of the tunes ' figured ' for him in his 
 instruction book. The Villagers had much joy in 
 their concertinas. Tomboy in time bought one ; 
 and it was a fine sight to see her learning it. Her 
 plan was to sit on the floor, so that if Timothy fell, 
 his fall would be slight. Timothy was in her lap ; 
 with both hands she held the concertina by the 
 straps, and the instruction book lay at her side. In 
 this manner she conciliated the safety of Timothy, 
 her own comfort, and the study of music. 
 
 Timothy was a rather bold, self-asserting boy, 
 with large dark eyes that you could scarcely for- 
 bear calling black. Not many people took to him. 
 Mrs White positively disliked him, and was only
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I09 
 
 kept from being unjust by her ideas of duty, and 
 the moral influence of Cherry. Of Cherry it may 
 be said that she could scarcely dislike anything in 
 human shape. She had all her father's widely in- 
 clusive sociality of temper, with much more back- 
 bone to her character, and much more light and 
 shade in her moods ; — she, of course, felt, as we 
 must all do, the resemblances and differences 
 between her fellow-creatures, but what she chiefly 
 felt were the resemblances. She had not the 
 same inclusive love for animals, and hated cats. 
 She took to Timothy, first because he was near, 
 and then, in a short time, the liking became 
 affection.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 nPHERE was no separate theatre, or concert- 
 room proper, in the Village ; and all the enter- 
 tainments, which were few and far between, were 
 transacted either in one of the school-rooms, or in 
 the large room of the * Jolly Graziers.' Every now 
 and then, quite at remote intervals however, the 
 Celebrated Sisters Bloomer, or the Great Indian 
 Juggler, Monsieur Leopardini (which, as you know, 
 is pure Hindoostanee), would pay the Village a 
 visit ; and then the Villagers had the opportunity 
 of enjoying a concert with songs * in character,' or a 
 conjuring performance, in which tricks that were
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. Ill 
 
 as old as woman's love were performed for nevv^ in 
 the most audacious manner, with the usual reward 
 of audacity — -fortes fortiuia jiivat — and if Leopar- 
 dini didn't do the strong thing with his ' novelties,' 
 there never was a conjuror who did. 
 
 But the great excitement for the Village was 
 when the distinguished Professor Wyndham, 
 M.C.P.B., as his bill said, paid the inhabitants a 
 visit, and delivered one of his thrilling lectures on 
 Electro-Biology. The youth of the Village man- 
 aged to turn these occasions into carnivals of 
 courting. In the first place there was crowding ; 
 and whatever may be the feelings of old folks who 
 have lost some of their sensibility, a couple of 
 sweethearts in the Village never object to being 
 'jammed in.' In the second place, it was some- 
 times necessary, for the Professor's purposes, to 
 turn off the gas for a short period. Now it is a
 
 112 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 well-known fact that when lovers have to go 
 through a long railway tunnel, they have so much 
 time to think about it, that they often don't kiss ; 
 but when the time is short, and the cue is now or 
 never, they pluck up courage, and the ancient, ever 
 fresh salute is transacted like a flash of lightning. 
 I have seen it done, in spite of the lowering of 
 the gas, at one of Professor Wyndham's highly 
 scientific lectures on Electro-Biology. But it was 
 not merely, or chiefly, little opportunities like 
 these that made the soirees of the professor so 
 attractive to the sweethearting youth of the Village. 
 It was the fearful joy of seeing Jane's young m.an 
 mesmerised, and wondering what he would do, and 
 what answers he would make to questions turning 
 on his sentiments as a man and lover; such as 
 'What do you like best in all the world .? ' Jane, 
 sitting in a reserved seat, carrying her elbows gen-
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. II3 
 
 teelly, blushes from the points of her toes to the 
 tips of her ears, fully expecting to hear her lover 
 say — something tender ; but he makes answer — 
 Pea-soup ! Yet Jane's fearful joy is not long post- 
 poned, for the Professor, defying grammar, next 
 puts the question, ' Who do you love best in all 
 the world ? ' — and thus adjured, the unblushing 
 youth says Jane Mills. Now, probably not more 
 than twenty or a dozen of the people present know 
 Jane ; but this answer is greeted with irrepressible 
 volleys of laughter, and shouts of* Stand up, Jane ! ' 
 and by to-morrow morning almost everybody in 
 the neighbourhood will know Jane, and Jane's 
 love-story, so far as it has been brought out by 
 Professor Wyndham. 
 
 A passage from Tomboy's diary will show that 
 one night a disturbance of a very peculiar nature 
 took place at the Professor's lecture : — 
 
 VOL. L I
 
 114 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 * TtLcsday. — Last night I had the pleasure of 
 attending at one of Professor Wyndham's lectures 
 on Electro-Biology, delivered at our Assembly 
 Room, a handsome apartment in connection with 
 the "Jolly Graziers." These lectures are, as the 
 intelligent reader will readily suppose, somewhat 
 exciting, but the one which was delivered on 
 Monday was more than usually so, owing to an 
 occurrence which disturbed the harmony of the 
 evening, and brought the proceedings to a close 
 somewhat earlier than was anticipated. The 
 Professor is usually accompanied by a lady, upon 
 whom he performs mesmeric experiments. She is 
 denominated Clairvoyante Celestine in the Pro- 
 fessor's announcements ; but Miss Russett and I 
 do not think her real name is Celestine. She is 
 rather hollow in the cheeks, and I am sure she 
 paints. Sometimes she sings when in the mesmicric
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. IT5 
 
 trance, and I have seen her perform the Claymore 
 dance with her eyes shut. Last night, nearly at the 
 end of the lecture, when she opened her eyes upon 
 being released from the trance by the Professor, 
 and turned to make her parting bow or curtsey to 
 the crowded audience, she appeared to rivet her 
 gaze upon some object at the further end of the 
 room. I distinctly saw her open her mouth wide, 
 and her eyes twitched in a most remarkable man- 
 ner. She then uttered a scream, not a loud one, 
 and sprang down from the platform upon the floor 
 of the room. As the platform was only temporary, 
 and made of planks covered with some old green 
 baize, it will not excite surprise that the jump she 
 took loosened it, so that the lecture-table fell over, 
 and the bottle of water was thrown down ; it 
 received no injury, though the tumbler was broken, 
 and of course the water was spilt. Mademoiselle
 
 ii6 shoemakers' village. 
 
 Celestine almost brushed me with her dress, which, 
 when I saw it close, seemed rather shabby ; but 
 there was not much time for mimitice, for she had 
 got to the door in a few seconds of time. It may 
 be supposed that there was a disturbance ; and I 
 distinctly saw a shabbily-dressed but genteel-look- 
 ing man at the back hurry out at the door, followed 
 by Mademoiselle Celestine, who exclaimed " Stop 
 him ! " There are conflicting reports as to what 
 ensued ; but the general opinion in the Village 
 appears to be that Mademoiselle Celestine had 
 discovered sometJiing by electricity, and desired to 
 bring the ofl'ender to jttstice. Captain Boldero has 
 returned to his duties at the Acacias, but nothing 
 has yet transpired with respect to the body which 
 he is alleged to have found on the door-step, 
 although I have endeavoured to draw him into 
 conversation on the subject. On my asking him if
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I17 
 
 he did not think Hfe very mysterious, and often 
 composed of unexpected occurrences, he coloured up, 
 and merely replied, " Do you think so ? " But I 
 am determined to sift this enigma to the bottom 
 for the sake of my friend Mrs Branch, though I do 
 not quite approve of her religions principles^ no 
 more do the young ladies at Miss Russett's.'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 T NEVER thought Mr Foat a nice-looking man 
 myself, but a good many people in the Village 
 did, and especially a good many members of our 
 Zion. He had unquestionably a mild face, and 
 you could not say the mildness was put on, or was 
 evidently maintained by an effort. But I did not 
 believe much, myself, in Mr Foat's mildness of 
 countenance. It seemed to me to lie altogether in 
 an incessant droop of feature, including the eye- 
 lids and the hair of the head. It did not appear as 
 if he made this drooping or relaxed expression,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. IJ9 
 
 the expression seemed to make itself. But, un- 
 luckily, the eyes were hard, small in the circle, of 
 a cold neutral grey, and shabbily set under the 
 brows. It is quite conceivable that Saint Dominic 
 had a face like Mr Foat's, and I have seen the 
 same cast of countenance in a few sincerely 
 laborious philanthropic people. The characters of 
 such people I may or may not have had much 
 opportunity of testing or scrutinizing, but I have 
 always found them implacable. Whatever appears 
 WTong to them in another assumes the shape of a 
 personal injury in their own minds ; and their 
 displeasure at errors of conduct, whether in 
 strangers or intimates, becomes a serious, pious, 
 self-cherishing revenge. 
 
 Now, poor, mean-souled, sordid Mr Foat was 
 not a hypocrite, and it seems a great shame of me 
 to write thus of an esteemed member of the Zoar
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 chapel connection, active in ' every good work : * 
 one of the Collectors and Visiting Referees of the 
 Declining Christians' Asylum ; and, indeed, a man 
 of whom I knew very little that I considered 
 wrong. Not only was he thought highly of in our 
 Zion ; the little shop which he rented in the Village 
 was of a kind which particularly suggests the 
 amenities and cheerful things of life. That he had 
 money in reserve was pretty well understood, and 
 what he did with it was not wholly a secret ; but, 
 to judge from the appearance he made in the com- 
 merce of the Village, he neither had, nor cared to 
 have, a pound in advance of his needs. He was 
 never communicative on the subject of his resources, 
 however, and would always accept, as if it repre- 
 sented the fact, any allusion to the small figure 
 which his little shop cut among even the small 
 shops of the Village. So deep, indeed, was his
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 121 
 
 humility, that he seemed to think even good 
 English too good for him : he always affected a 
 loose, ungrammatlcal mode of speech, as more 
 becoming his ' low estate.' In order, however, to 
 show his consciousness of what was due to accuracy, 
 he would sometimes fling in a ' were ' in the wrong 
 place, with a delicacy of intonation Vvhich at once 
 advertised the listener that he considered the 
 plural form a recherchee thing — like a choice 
 claret, or the badge of the garter, or anything 
 else that is honorary, but for state occasions only 
 or chiefly. 
 
 Mr Foat kept a toyshop. Mingled with the toys 
 — harmless flaxen-headed dolls, and humming-tops, 
 and variegated balls, and painted popguns — were 
 equally innocent farthing and halfpenny children's 
 books, and bottles of sweetstuffs, not perhaps quite 
 as harmless. The keeping of a toyshop is, it must
 
 122 shoemakers' VILLAGE. 
 
 be allowed, a peculiarly gentle occupation for a 
 stout-built widower of five-and-forty, with a slender 
 little daughter of seven or eight, no more like him 
 than any wool-headed little wooden puppy-dog 
 among the toys ; and it was a study to see Foat 
 serving out barley-sugar or battledores to his 
 young customers. Between him and Cherry there 
 was war. Like too many other mild people, he was 
 very fond of giving advice which much resembled 
 dictation, and Cherry was, to put it no higher, a 
 girl upon whom advice was lost. 
 
 ' Oh, Mr Foat,' said Cherry, bouncing in one day, 
 * I want Baron Munchausen, please ' — and she flung 
 down her penny. 
 
 With ineffable blandness, Mr Foat made an- 
 swer — 
 
 * I think, my dear, your mother would rayther 
 you laid out your money in something different —
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 123 
 
 something more Instructive; the Dairyman's Daugh- 
 ter is very interesting.' 
 
 So saying, he leaned forward with outspread 
 flattened hands on the counter, beaming down 
 on Cherry Hke her better angel, divinely com- 
 missioned to warn her of the wickedness of 
 Baron Munchausen. A flash of humour passed 
 over Cherry's face in a moment ; she was older 
 than she looked, and Foat was too self-Involved 
 to suspect anything of this gauche rough girl, 
 with her hair anyhow, and a pair of large eyes, 
 in whose lambency of motion he could see no- 
 thing particular. 
 
 ' Lor ! ' said Cherry, ' do you keep religious 
 books as well .'' Do let me have a look ! ' 
 
 The enchanted Foat immediately produced three 
 good thick packets of children's tracts. In thin tissue 
 covers of all colours, chiefly inaicvc, and deposited
 
 124 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 them before Cherry on the counter, for her in- 
 spection. 
 
 ' There, you see, miss ; let's see if we can find 
 you a nice Dairyman's Daughter,' said he, begin- 
 ning to untie the books, and run them through one 
 by one. 
 
 ' Why, Mr Foat,' says Cherry, ' what makes 
 religious books have mmcve covers always } ' 
 
 ' It isn't the cover,' said Foat, with soft dis- 
 pleasure in his tones, 'it's the inside as brings a 
 blessing with it' 
 
 ' Lor, yes,' replied Cherry, with extreme gravity, 
 taking up one of the little thin tracts, and leaning 
 against the counter, as she held it open at the 
 middle where it was sewn — ' I like these books ! 
 This is beautiful : — " Little Mary was now three 
 years and a-half old. Such was the work of grace 
 in her heart that her kind parents now seldom
 
 shoemakers' village. 125 
 
 found it necessary to use the rod. Many a time 
 she was known to creep alone into the bedroom, 
 where she was overheard to engage in supplication 
 with sob's and tears. But in a short time, she had 
 a very serious illness." Oh, that is beautiful, Mr 
 Foat ! Let me see some more, if you've got 
 'em!' 
 
 '■ A ha'porth of toffee,' interposed a little voice, — 
 that of a greedy-looking boy. 
 
 ' Don't keep toffee, my dear,' said Foat, — * hard- 
 bake ? ' 
 
 ' I wants toffee,' replied the child, and left the 
 shop : but only to hang loitering and doubting 
 round the window. 
 
 After this interruption Foat and Cherry resumed 
 their studies. 
 
 * Here's a nice one ! ' said Foat, in his most insin- 
 uating manner ; * it's out of Jancway's Token. I
 
 126 shoemakers' village. 
 
 put my Fanny to bed at three o'clock yesterday 
 afternoon because she went to sleep over it.' 
 
 ' Oh, do let's see that' eagerly exclaimed Cherry. 
 
 ' Ah, I wish my Fanny was like you, miss,' re- 
 sponded Foat ; * this is hever so much before Mun- 
 chausen.' 
 
 And so the game went on, till the fascinated 
 shopkeeper began to grow a little weary, in spite of 
 Cherry's enthusiasm for * religious books.' 
 
 ' Couldn't you bring your mind to fix on one 
 of these three } ' said he, at last, spreading three 
 of the small mauve-coloured tracts out with his 
 fingers. 
 
 * N — n — o,' said Cherry, with languor, cocking 
 her head reflectively, ' I think Til take — Baron 
 Munchausen. He's more spiritual . . . N — n — o, 
 I won't, I won't have any this morning. ... I 
 ain't made up my mind.' . . . And, so saying,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I27 
 
 Cherry made good her departure, leaving Mr Foat 
 with a countenance in which the guardian-angel 
 expression was scarcely so obtrusively visible as 
 it had been five minutes before. Indeed, he glanced 
 angrily at one of the toy-whips hanging up on the 
 wall of the little shop, alongside of the bright tin 
 rattles. 
 
 Even a toy-whip is capable of inflicting a good 
 deal of pain ; a strapping youngster likes a well- 
 twisted thong, and the toy-makers provide it for 
 him. I am sorry to be forced to add that Tvir Foat 
 sometimes used a whip to poor little Fanny.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 npHERE was a member of our Zion who had 
 been some time ago ' cut off,' that is to say, 
 displaced from the right of Church-fellowship, for a 
 reason which I cannot even remotely specify. It 
 had, however, nothing to do with his honesty. Mr 
 Todstull, after a season of retirement, turned up 
 again, at first furtively and tentatively, at last more 
 boldly. Many select members of Zoar meeting- 
 house church could say that they had seen him and 
 conversed with him, and at last it was whispered 
 about that Todstull, having repented and having 
 been punished by rustication, was to be ' restored ; '
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I29 
 
 that is, admitted to communion again. This 
 rumour was not well received at Zoar, at least by 
 the majority of the members. Several of the most 
 influential were heard to say, ' If that man 
 ever comes to the Table when I am there, I 
 will walk out of the place, and wash my hands 
 of Zoar for ever.' Others, varying the image, had 
 declared that if Todstull were received again 
 they would shake off the dust of their feet against 
 the place. Still a few of the members, Foat among 
 them, took his part ; and quoted David and the 
 penitential psalms. Todstull, however, had not 
 only been wicked ; he had made himself loathed. 
 In vain, then, Foat quoted the penitential psalms. 
 Brother Todstull's bones were melted within him 
 like wax. He had watered his couch with his tears. 
 He had been * overtaken in a fault ' (he most cer- 
 tainly had), but the Church being * spiritual ' was
 
 130 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 now to ' restore ' him ' in a spirit of meekness ' (Gal, 
 vi. i). Was it right to break the bruised reed or to 
 quench the smoking flax ? But all this availed 
 nothing, and Todstull remained out in the cold, as 
 far as Zoar was concerned. He disappeared again; 
 but, after a while, turned up, sleek and fat and gen- 
 teel, in the company of Foat. Foat v/as then only 
 a toy-shop keeper, but he had saved a little money 
 and when Todstull informed him, as he did, that 
 he had joined the Church of the Reverend Isaac 
 Steels (which was a very large one, and where they 
 were ' higher ' on effectual calling than they were 
 at Zoar even), and that he had become quite a 
 capitalist, Foat's sensibilities were aroused, and his 
 curiosity excited. 
 
 * Well, brother,' said Mr Foat, ' you seem to 
 have been prospered in your goings forth and your 
 comines in } '
 
 SHOE^sIAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 'Yes,' said Todstull, 'having saved a little money, 
 by the mercy of the Lord, I began to discount 
 a few bills.' He then went on to explain that if 
 Foat had a little nest-egg, and chose to embark in 
 the remunerative business — the lucr^^tive business, 
 he called it — of bill-discounting in a quiet way, he 
 might also become a capitalist. Foat leapt at the 
 proposal, and immediately entered into partnership 
 with Todstull, though the fact was kept pretty 
 quiet. 
 
 The result of this was that Mr Todstull was an 
 occasional visitor at Mr Foat's. Whenever he came, 
 there were books and papers produced, and a 
 whispering kind of audit, which little Fanny of 
 course did not understand ; and the visit always 
 ended with what was called prayer. 
 
 It was, according to Mr Foat's own statement, 
 one of the peculiarities of the late Mrs Foat, that
 
 132 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 she always set her face obstinately against his 
 friends ; and little Fanny, as shy as her mother had 
 been and as impressible, appeared likely to con- 
 tinue the tradition. She could not endure Mr Tod- 
 stuU : she shrank from his kind looks, his kind 
 speeches, and, above all, his kind touches. But in 
 an incredibly short space of time, although Mr 
 TodstuU's accounts made it out that his partner 
 had been a large gainer since the partnership, Mr 
 Foat found himself involved in transactions capable 
 of such an equivocal colouring that he either was, 
 or fancied he was, under TodstuU's thumb. He 
 came to stand in dread of him ; to feel that it was 
 now necessary to conciliate him in every possible 
 way. It is useless inquiring how a member of a 
 Church contrived to ' reconcile ' all this to himself : 
 men like Mr Foat are not made for moral problems 
 or for religion in any high sense : they may be
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 worse or better ; they may be improved within a 
 certain range ; but their natures seen irrevocably 
 bounded for them in this world ; what may be- 
 come of them in another life who knows ? 
 
 One evening, as Foat, Todstull, and little Fanny 
 were in the back parlour behind the shop together, 
 the visitor was particularly attentive to Fanny. 
 
 ' " And all thy children shall be taught of the 
 Lord " — that's a precious portion, Foat,' said Tod- 
 stull, looking at Fanny. A passage of Scripture 
 was, in the dialect of Zoar, a portion. 
 
 ' A sweet promise to parents,' said Foat. 
 
 ' " The promise is unto you and to your chil- 
 dren," ' resumed Todstull. 
 
 ' Did you hear Hembler on that, the Sunday as 
 Sister Hopkins's twin boys was buried in the cime- 
 tairy ? ' 
 
 ' I recollect it well. It was a choice word in
 
 134 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 season. Like dew upon the tender herb.' Mrs 
 Hopkins was a hard, acrid woman of forty, with a 
 special hatred of Mrs Padbury, who, she con- 
 sidered, had never shown decided signs of being 
 called. It would have puzzled Mrs Padbury to 
 show decided signs of anything. 
 
 The utter inappropriateness of these Scriptural 
 quotations must not surprise the reader. Mr Foat 
 and Mr Todstull belonged to that large class of 
 persons who treat the Bible as if it had dropped 
 from the skies yesterday in English print, with 
 unreserved applicability, in every line, to the mo- 
 dern reader — if the reader were qualified to * lay 
 hold ' of the * promises,' as they called them. 
 
 ' My dear,' resumed Todstull, addressing Fanny, 
 ' come to me, and tell me what you think of these 
 words — " There shall be boys and girls playing in 
 the streets of the New Jerusalem." '
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. T35 
 
 But Fanny did not come : she only twiddled her 
 pinafore, and looked up from under her eye-lashes 
 at the wall just over the speaker's head. 
 
 ' Fanny,' interposed her father, ' you should speak 
 when you are spoken to.' 
 
 This only made Fanny's tongue cleave all the 
 more to the roof of her little mouth. Her heart 
 began to beat fast. She coidd not speak. 
 
 * Do you think yo2L would like to play in the 
 streets of the New Jerusalem, my dear } ' said 
 Todstull, more insinuatingly than ever. * The 
 walls of the city,' said he, lifting up his right hand 
 oratorically, shall be of jasper and chalcedony, and 
 the lion shall eat straw like the ox ; and in that day 
 there shall be bells upon the horses, and they shall 
 bring forth the topstone thereof, shouting, O Zcrub- 
 babel ! ' 
 
 The chief point in this very lumiinous jumble
 
 136 shoemakers' village. 
 
 which Fanny caught, was that of the bells upon 
 the horses. Unluckily for her position in the 
 company, — and, with burning shame be it spoken, 
 for her young skin when the company was away, 
 — the bells upon the horses, followed by the word 
 Zerubbabel, which she thought sounded something 
 like the water coming into the cistern-pipe of a 
 morning, suggested Banbury cross, and the lady on 
 the cock-horse, with the bells on her fingers and 
 toes. This does not strike you and me as very 
 laughable ; but think what a chick Fanny was. 
 The poor little hunted thing — for all this nonsense 
 was hunting — burst out laughing. Knowing she 
 had done ^ wrong ' to laugh, and seeing the cloud 
 on her father's brow, she next burst out crying, and 
 hid her face in her pinafore. Unable to endure 
 the spectacle of ' a female in distress,' TodstuU 
 clutched her to him, and began to say something
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 1 37 
 
 incoherent, in the way of consolation and admoni- 
 tion combined. But the Httle maid could not relish 
 his embrace, and tore herself away by main force. 
 The sound of a great rent in her pinafore told 
 what an effort she had made. Worse and worse, 
 in her struggle to escape she slightly scratched 
 her benefactor's hand. 
 
 ' Go to bed, miss, this minute ! ' said Mr Foat, 
 in a tone that she understood quite well. So she 
 crept up-stairs sobbing, and wondering, and dread- 
 ing the morning ; being clear about only one 
 thing, that she hated the very look of Mr Tod- 
 stull. 
 
 After this little scene, Foat ' engaged,' and the 
 two friends parted for the night. 
 
 Shall I try here and say a few explanatory 
 words about the peculiar piety of Mr TodstuU ? 
 
 It was absolutely impossible for this man not to
 
 138 shoemakers' village. 
 
 mix up ' religion ' with whatever he did. He was 
 by nature a fetichist ; could not get along without 
 the unction of religious phrases and the help of 
 religious associations. How they affected him — 
 how they affect men and women like him — is a 
 profound mystery ; but the facts are clear. We 
 cannot help finding such beings odious ; but 
 we have solved no difficulty by calling them hypo- 
 crites. It befell, then, that being excommunicated 
 a second time, Mr Todstull felt a vacancy, a sort of 
 moral ' sinking ' in his nature. His fetichistic 
 instinct sniffed about and around him for a while, 
 and at last it found what suited it in spirit-rapping. 
 He took greedily to this new excitement, and 
 found no difficulty in ' working It In ' upon the old 
 pattern of belief and feeling. Neither did he find 
 any difficulty In working it Into his business as a 
 bill discounter ; for he used to frighten foolish
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE, 
 
 139 
 
 young men, and the women of stained reputation, 
 who came to him for money, by mysterious hints 
 of the power which his * mediums ' gave him for 
 finding out secrets in their hves. He issued a 
 circular conceived in the following terms : — ' The 
 Spiritual World Unlocked to Man ! God Moves 
 in a mysterious way ! E. TodstuU has been 
 favoured with peculiar communications from the 
 Spirits. Please to observe this is no deception ! 
 Testimonials from those Vv'ho have applied to the 
 Spirits, under the direction of E. Todstull. Second- 
 sight now for the first time applied to promote 
 religion and true morality and discover the workings 
 of wickedness. Parents who have lost their off- 
 spring, lovers who have been disappointed, and 
 those who have had pecuniary losses, treated with, 
 on reasonable terms, and in strict confidence. The 
 Spirits can give information upon all subjects, from
 
 140 shoemakers' village. 
 
 a lost child to the startling secrets of the Dead 
 Letter Office.' Unfortunately, one of these cir- 
 culars fell into the hands of Clairvoyante Jane. 
 
 Into this sort of thing did Mr Foat find himself 
 plunged at last ; and, through the ingenious 
 management of Mr TodstuU, the money relations 
 of the two men were from time to time found so 
 entangled that extrication seemed always impos- 
 sible to Foat. It is only just to him to say that he 
 found the tie an irksome and a shameful one, and 
 that its continuance was a punishment to him as 
 well as a source of profit — if profit there was. And 
 there certainly appeared to be a good deal shown 
 upon the face of TodstuU's accounts. 
 
 Meanwhile, Fanny is having a very uneasy time 
 of it to-night in her little crib.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 T T was the next day after this, early in the morning, 
 that Cherry, passing by the shop of Mr Foat 
 at a httle before nine, saw a group of children 
 gathered in a pose of attention round the door. 
 There was nobody behind the counter, and it was 
 impossible to see much through the long, decorous 
 white curtain which sheltered the small parlour 
 from the scrutiny of the customers ; but Cherry 
 heard little half-suppressed cries of pain, which 
 made her open her mouth and draw her breath 
 faster than usual. They sounded like the cries of 
 a child who was trying to stifle its complaints, cither
 
 142 shoemakers' village. 
 
 from a sense of shame, or because it was being 
 threatened with something worse than it was already 
 suffering if it made a noise. 
 
 Cherry had quick ears, and she certainly fancied 
 she distinguished another voice, not that of a child, 
 and not pleasant to listen to — a voice with a chilly, 
 soft, merciless rhythm in it, repeating a demand 
 that was not complied with. But the little stifled 
 shrieks went on, and at last came an apparently 
 irrepressible — 
 
 ' Oh, dont, father, pray ! ' 
 
 This v/as too much for Cherry. The blood rose 
 to her very ears ; she flew into the shop, dashed 
 open the decorous parlour door, in spite of an effort 
 made from the inside, only too late, to keep it closed, 
 and stood, flaming and contemptuous, with her 
 bonnet flying back over her neck, before the mild- 
 looking; Mr Foat. He looked milder than ever —
 
 shoemakers' village. 143 
 
 except that his eyelids straightened in their droop. 
 
 * Aint you ashamed of yourself, you nasty, cruel — 
 muckworm ? ' cried Cherry, pausing half a second 
 for an epithet, and hitting, as she so often did, upon 
 an inappropriate one. Mr Foat did not particularly 
 resemble a worm. 
 
 ' Oh, don't, don't, don't, miss ! ' sobbed out little 
 Fan, hurrying on her knees up to Cherry, and 
 sobbing at her skirts ; ' go away, go away, go 
 away ! ' 
 
 Mr Foat, never eloquent or apt at repartee, was 
 now nearly dumb; he looked as silly as a child 
 caught at the jam-pot. 
 
 ' You hear what she says ? ' he gasped out, gently ; 
 'you hear.? Go away! Fanny, my dear child, 
 come here ! ' 
 
 'Come here.!*' broke out Cherry, losing all 
 command of herself, and making a desperate clutch
 
 144 shoemakers' village. 
 
 at Fanny, who had only her little night-shirt on. 
 *Come here, indeed, you wretch!' proceeded Cherry. 
 * What do you call this ? ' 
 
 Now Cherry had caught sight of a red streak on 
 the child's little neck, and also of a whip which Mr 
 Foat had flung under the table. With sublime 
 indecorum, holding Fan with a mighty grip, she 
 snatched her night-dress clean up to the shoulders, 
 and said to the bewildered, enfeebled Foat, 
 
 * Look at the wales on that child's body — a 
 delicate child like that, too ! What do you call 
 that .? ' 
 
 * I call it a father's care for his child's immortle 
 soul, miss. Not as you've a right to be in my 
 parlour, and you will please to go ; and I shall 
 inform your mother of your conduct.* 
 
 While this was going on inside the little parlour, 
 you may be sure the public in pinafores outside
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 145 
 
 the shop had not grown any smaller. One of the 
 new-comers suddenly raised the cry of ' Here's 
 Teacher ! ' and so there was. Teacher was on his 
 way to business, grave, and looking straight before 
 him as usual ; but he could not resist the appeals 
 of the little people. 
 
 * Oh, Teacher, here's a murder ! ' 
 'And Cherry White's gone into Mr Foat's 
 parlour ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, there's been such screaming, Teacher, there 
 has!' 
 
 Teacher would have been more or less than 
 human if, after this, he had passed indifferent on. 
 All the thoughts that struggled rapidly through his 
 mind we need not try to guess ; but he soon made 
 a fourth inside the little parlour of the guilty Foat. 
 It is true he had the good manners to tap on the 
 panel ; but he turned the latch at the .siimc 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 shoemakers' village. 
 
 moment, and stood, tall, gaunt, solemn before 
 them all. The first thing he did was, as usual, 
 when there v/as a difficulty before him, to run his 
 hand through his hair, so as to make it all stand up 
 on end. Cherry went so far, at a later period, as 
 to assert that ' it was like flaming, fiery swords ' on 
 that occasion. 
 
 ' Good morning, Mr Woods,' said Mr Foat, as 
 mildly as ever, but with an accent of pious courage, 
 and that he felt reinforced by the presence of a 
 brother. 
 
 ' Good morning,' said Woods, in his usual deep, 
 quiet voice, with its invariable rising inflection ; 
 but turning to Cherry rather than addressing Foat. 
 Of course Woods had seized at a glance the true 
 relations of all the persons present. You often 
 read in novels of people who are too stupid to see 
 obvious things, but in real Hfe human beings are
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. I47 
 
 quick to understand, and nineteen-twentieths of 
 the tragical misunderstandings which occur in 
 plays and story books are simply impossible. 
 
 Cherry, confronted by this grave, inflexible man, 
 felt as if she must sink into the earth. He seemed 
 to be always turning up in her path, and always 
 when she was in a difficulty. 
 
 * What's the matter .? ' said he, addressing her, 
 with a kind half-smile. ' My time's short, ye 
 know ; I'm away to beezness.' 
 
 * Look here ! ' burst out Cherry, breaking down 
 in tears, and at the same time uncovering the little 
 girl's back again ; but this time untying the string 
 at the neck, and letting the night-dress fall to the 
 thin waled flanks. ' TJiafs the matter,' said 
 Cherry ; ' and if I was a man, I'd ... . I'd ... . 
 shake Mr Foat till he couldn't see out of his wicked 
 old eyes 1 ' And then another burst of tears.
 
 148 shoemakers' village. 
 
 Mr Foat lifting his hands, and beaming out with a 
 great sacred serenity ; but looking rather foolish 
 for all that. 
 
 It was plainly incumbent upon Mr Woods to 
 make an end of this scene, and he began his 
 difficult task by saying in a half-whisper to 
 Cherry — 
 
 ' Hadn't ye better go home ? I can see to the 
 child here. Will ye trust me ? ' 
 
 This was very flattering and very soothing to 
 poor Cherry. It flattered — I was going to say her 
 pride, only it was something infinitely better than 
 pride that was touched in her young bosom — it 
 flattered her, then, to be spoken to as if she had 
 any trust to delegate ; and there was always some- 
 thing calming and comforting in the manner of 
 Woods. She turned her large eyes upon the 
 Teacher, wet and soft with tears as they were, and,
 
 shoemakers' village. 149 
 
 allowing Fan to slip away, gave him her hand to 
 shake, and disappeared through the parlour-door 
 into the shop. 
 
 As for the questioning that awaited her in the 
 street, and in her walks about the Village, you 
 never got anything out of Tomboy in the way of 
 scandal. As she came out at the door of that 
 temple of innocence, Mr Foat's toyshop, she ran 
 against Amelia Luckin. 
 
 * Why don't you wait for Mr Woods, Cherry } ' 
 drawled Amelia. 
 
 'Walk to business with him yourself!' said 
 Cherry, whose eyes were yet dim with tears — 
 indeed, she did not notice the glint of rapid anger 
 in Amelia's eyes as she said this, and she passed 
 on, and was soon cheerfully absorbed in those cares 
 of a mother with which Timothy filled up so much 
 of her time. But Amelia loitered about the Vil-
 
 150 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 lage all the morning, so that as their early dinner- 
 time approached, her mother grew anxious about 
 her. A little before twelve o'clock Amelia 
 thought proper to come home. 
 
 ' Now, then, 'Melia, 'Meha, 'Melia ! ' 
 
 Mrs Luckin, standing at the shop-door, sent 
 forth this cry in her most affectionate and musical 
 tones : there she stood, with one arm akimbo, and 
 shading her eyes from the sun with the other as 
 she looked down the street after the precious 
 'Melia, who might be perceived in the dusty dis- 
 tance by eyes less quick than a mother's, munching 
 something more substantial than delicate, and 
 looking as if she had just lunched on mischief. 
 
 ' Now then, 'Melia dear,' said her mother, a 
 little sharply, as her daughter drew slowly nigher, 
 ' come in to dinner, do, child ! ' 
 
 * I shan't,' answered Amelia ; but making
 
 SHOEIMAKERS VILLAGE. 151 
 
 Straight for the shop all the while : ' I don't want 
 any dinner.' 
 
 This was a stroke of humour which was familiar 
 to the happy mother, and, having made provision 
 for the worst in the shape of a dozen ' sad ' dump- 
 lings, besides the ' hash,' she could afford to reply 
 with her accustomed indulgence — 
 
 ' Oh, naughty, naughty 'Melia ! The black man 
 will come for little girls that say they don't want 
 any dinner. It's very wicked not to want dinner, 
 and when there's traycle with the pudd'n, for 
 shame.' 
 
 By this time Amelia had reached the shop-door, 
 and was received with open arms by her mother, 
 who ' touzled ' her upon her bosom for a moment 
 or two, and then led her, or rather encouraged, 
 patted, or coaxed her into the parlour behind the 
 shop ; Amelia feigning reluctance all the way.
 
 152 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 In most villages is there not a Public Idiot, or a 
 Public Epilept ? There may be two or three na- 
 turals in the population, and two or three boys or 
 girls who have fits ; but is there not sure to be one 
 girl or boy whose fits are matter of publicity, so 
 that the people say to a stranger (if it is a girl) 
 * There, she has fits ' ? Amelia had fits. She was 
 a fat, stumpy, pudding-headed girl, with coarse 
 large eyebrows, and gloomy eyes, that never had 
 the light of pity in them. If it had not been that 
 there 7nusl be something of the grace of youth in 
 the young, she would have been a wdioUy repulsive 
 object. Though her bust was strongly marked, 
 she had, in other respects, the appearance of a 
 child, and certainly did not look older than eleven, 
 even with her pinafore off", and she usually wore 
 one. But her small malignities were the terror of 
 the Village. If she could find a chance of upsetting
 
 shoemakers' village. 153 
 
 a cradle with a baby in it — or twisting a child's 
 finger backwards — or tearing a strip of diachylon 
 plaster off a cut — or turning out a chest of drawers 
 pellmell upon the floor — she was happy, supposing 
 she could make use of the opportunity. 
 
 In the afternoon of the day, Cherry had occasion to 
 go to the little general shop for some domestic trifle. 
 
 * Well, my dear,' said Mrs Luckin, ' what's up at 
 Foats's ? I understand he hit you with a cart-whip, 
 but I don't see no place. Where was it he struck 
 you } ' 
 
 * Now, Mrs Luckin,' says Cherry, with entire 
 good-humour, but unassailable reticence, ' if you're 
 going to pump me, you'll have to mend your 
 sucker.' 
 
 * Ah, my gal, I know you're a deep 'un. You're 
 a honourable one, too ; that's what you arc. You 
 always keep a secret.'
 
 154 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 ' Mrs Luckin, how can you talk so ? I never 
 have any secrets ; because I never think of whether 
 I ought to tell a thing, or whether I oughtn't.' 
 
 * Now, Cherry, that beats everything ! Why 
 don't you tell things, then ? What makes you 
 keep things to yourself .? ' 
 
 ' I don't. Things keep to me. And why shouldn't 
 they .? ' 
 
 Just at that moment Amelia was visible to 
 Cherr}/^, just above the little white muslin parlour 
 curtains. She was flattening her nose, and looking 
 as wicked as anything human could look. Cherry 
 felt sure she had been listening, and then the door 
 opened, and 'Melia said, in her hateful drawl — 
 
 * Mother ! ha' you asked her yet whether it's true 
 as she kissed Mr Woods the night when there was 
 the magic-lantern at the school-room, and we was 
 all in darkness } '
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 TI^OR all Tomboy's notion, not very ill founded, 
 that Mrs Branch was not one to care for the 
 beauties of nature, she did not fail to go and see 
 her again directly, and take her some more flowers. 
 It was night ; the little shop was closed, and Mrs 
 Branch, very much better, was doing some plain 
 needlework in her small back parlour. Her quiet, 
 but not weak face, with its odd ornament of tor- 
 toiseshell spectacles, was not an unpleasant study. 
 You must know she wore a cap, and had a bold 
 beautiful nose, and a large mouth full of sensibility 
 and kindness. Chcrr}- had taste, but was reckless
 
 156 shoemakers' village. 
 
 of appearances. Mrs Branch never made an appear- 
 ance, or consulted people's fancies, just because she 
 had no instinct which made any distinction for her 
 between what was ugly and what was pretty. 
 When her boy Thomas, just before he went to sea 
 again, made her a present of a new Bible, she 
 carried it to chapel regularly every Sunday, with a 
 brown paper cover on it, to preserve the binding. 
 
 ' Won't you take off your things, my dear .? ' said 
 she to Cherry, on this occasion. 
 
 ' Lor, no, Mrs Branch ; I've only looked in to 
 see how you are, you know. You seem rather 
 dull' 
 
 ' Do I, dear .? I don't fed dull. I'm wonder- 
 fully sustained. " As thy days, so shall thy strength 
 be." ' 
 
 ' Well, I don't know about sustained ; but you 
 seem to me dull. I shall sing something.'
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 157 
 
 It would, perhaps, be wrong to say Cherry was 
 proud of her voice ; but surely she delighted in it. 
 People often accuse others of pride in their work 
 when they are only rejoicing in it. 
 
 * Sing ? bless the girl ! ' said Mrs Branch, look- 
 ing up, and biting the end off her thread. Cherry 
 began, as innocent as a bird in a covert, quite as 
 earnestly intent on what she was doing, and with- 
 out a scrap of self-consciousness, 
 
 ' " Glory to thee, my God, this night ; " ' 
 and having done that, a little abbreviated it is true, 
 turned to Mrs Branch with — 
 
 ' There ! I know you wouldn't like a so//^:' 
 
 * Well, child, there are some songs, or used to be, 
 that I don't know there's any harm in. There was 
 the ** Lass of Richmond Hill," — that was a favourite 
 song when I was little — it was about King George 
 the Third and Miss Thingamybob.'
 
 158 shoemakers' village. 
 
 * Well, you shall have something beUvixt and 
 between. I don't know the " Lass of Richmond 
 Hill," but I'll sing a Christmas Carol, because it 
 isn't Christmas.' 
 
 ' Dear me, how merry you are ! ' said Mrs 
 Branch, with a sigh, looking up at Tomboy, who 
 had already begun the carol. 
 
 Now Mrs Branch had little sensibility to music 
 as tune, but the vibrations of a fine voice moved 
 her, as they do other unmusical people, and Cherry 
 saw that her eyelids were tremulous, and her lips, 
 and that two great drops were ready to trickle 
 down the cheeks. So she finished ofi" with the 
 Doxology, ' Praise God, from whom all blessings 
 flow,' to the Old Hundredth. 
 
 ' Now, Mrs Branch,' said she, ' it's your turn.' 
 
 * Me sing, my dear ? You're making game of 
 me.'
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 159 
 
 * No, I ain't ; you sJiall sing ! ' 
 
 * I'm sure I can't, Cherry. But here's a hymn- 
 book, and you can borrow it if you Hke.' 
 
 As Cherry opened the book, her abundant bright 
 hair fell down in a wave from one side of her 
 bonnet ; and, as she lifted her shapely arm to tuck 
 it in again, Mrs Branch got a sense of warm youth- 
 ful life and health, which did her good, though she 
 hardly knew it. But she soon had fresh reason to 
 think Tomboy was very * unsanctified.' 
 
 ' Ha, ha ! ' she cried, clapping her hands, ' do 
 you call this rhyme, Mrs Branch } Look here ! 
 
 *'Here I raise my Ebenezer, 
 
 Hither by thine help I'm come, 
 , And I hope in thy good pleasure 
 Safely to arrive at home.' 
 
 Do you call Ebenezer and pleasure rhymes ? ' 
 ' My dear,' said Mrs Branch, ' I haven't got much
 
 i6o shoemakers' village. 
 
 head-knowledge ; you're cleverer than I am ; but 
 that's the experience of every one that has 
 
 tasted ' and then she stopped, shaking her 
 
 head. 
 
 Cherry resolved to change the subject. 
 ' How is Mr Woods ? ' said she ; ' I think he 
 isn't quite such a guy as he used to be.' 
 
 Mrs Branch looked up inquiringly. ' I'm sure, 
 my child, he's just the same as ever.' This ' guy ' 
 was another ' unsanctified ' allusion. There was a 
 minute's silence. 
 
 ' I wish, Cherry,' resumed Mrs Branch, ' I often 
 wish I could see some signs of a work of grace in 
 your heart.' 
 
 * I try to be good,' said Cherry, with the faintest 
 approach to a pout, ' and I believe in our Saviour 
 as much as you do.' 
 
 Mrs Branch had seen the pout, and nov/, putting
 
 up a silent prayer, laid down her needlework, and 
 leaned for\vard towards Cherry, with both arms on 
 the table, saying — 
 
 * My dear, have you been led to feel yourself a 
 sinner ? Your own goodness is as filthy rags.' 
 
 ' You talk as if I was very wicked, Mrs Branch ; 
 and mother's always at me about it. I'm sure I 
 don't mean to do wicked things.' 
 
 * When we are in darkness, child, all we do is 
 wickedness.' 
 
 * Do you mean to tell me I was wicked when I 
 took to Timothy } ' 
 
 * My dear, did you do it as unto the Lord, or 
 as unto men 1 ' 
 
 Cherry paused for two or three seconds ; at last 
 she answered with decision — 
 ' Neither. My heart ' 
 
 * Oh, child ! the heart is deceitful above all 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 shoemakers' village. 
 
 things, and desperately wicked. Out of the heart 
 proceed murders ' 
 
 * Now don't go on Hke that, you frighten me ! Of 
 course, when I'm saucy to mother, or when I slap 
 Timothy because I'm cross, or anything of that, I 
 remember it when I say " our trespasses," and 
 I think of our Saviour — suffered under Pontius 
 Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, the third day 
 he rose again.' 
 
 Mrs Branch shook her head, and resumed her 
 work. After a pause she spoke again. 
 
 ^ If ever I should see you brought to the light, 
 Cherry, I think you'd be the child of many 
 prayers.' 
 
 Again there was silence. This time it was 
 Cherry who spoke first. 
 
 ' I think, Mrs Branch, if I was a Cumbersome 
 Christian like you, I should never get married.'
 
 shoemakers' village. 163 
 
 Mrs Branch again shook her head ; and mur- 
 mured half to herself, half to Cherry — ' Be ye not 
 unequally yoked together. 
 
 *' Chosen Jews 
 Must not use 
 Woollen mixed with linen." ' 
 
 Cheriy looked at the old lady with blank wonder. 
 ' What does that mean ? ' said she. 
 
 * That comes from " Hart's Hymns," child,' said 
 Mrs Branch, drawing the thread through her lips. 
 ' Hark, there's a knock at the door ! ' 
 
 ' There, now, how pale you're turned ; you're 
 always thinking of that shabby 'man and the 
 umbrella ; but it isn't him, you may depend upon 
 it.' 
 
 ' No, my dear ; it's Woods's knock, I know ; but 
 any knock at the door gives me a turn over like, 
 since that night.'
 
 164 shoemakers' village. 
 
 The remainder of the story of the evening in 
 Mrs Branch's back parlour may be gathered from 
 another extract from Tomboy's Diary. 
 
 ' . . . . Mr Woods dropped his hat as he came 
 in. Suppose he should be paying his addresses to 
 Mrs Branch. He said he had heard me singing. 
 I presume he would not come in at once, but 
 waited outside because he thought I should be 
 going away, and then he could see Mrs Branch all 
 alone. Mrs Branch asked me how old I was. I 
 could hardly remember ; and then she seemed 
 almost vexed that I was so old.' 
 
 All of this seems commonplace, and some of it 
 rather sordid. But this a life like Cherry's never 
 can be. If she does not go to Romance, Romance 
 will come to her. And Cherry, I know, was always 
 having wonderful dreams — oh, such dreams !
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 nPHE large, rare, old-fashioned house which Miss 
 Russett had rechristened the Acacias, is not 
 unworthy of a few sentences of description. The 
 garden is quite a sea of greenery, in the middle of 
 which the house stands like an island. A big clump 
 of tall elms shades one side of the front ; and on 
 the other side an enormous chestnut-tree has been 
 allowed to grow so near, and press so vehemently 
 upon the building, that, when the wind is high, the 
 great strong boughs grate against the walls and 
 beat upon the roof with groaning, rattling noises
 
 l66 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 that have helped to give a weird repute to some of 
 the rooms upon that side of the mansion. 
 
 The outside of the house is of red brick ; all the 
 windows being bordered with stone-work, carved in 
 a very old-fashioned way into scrolls of leafage and 
 grinning monster heads. Strictly speaking, the 
 windows are casements, one or two of them with 
 diamond-shaped panes in frames of lead ; all of 
 them are roomy casements, both within and with- 
 out, and in the lower tiers they have borders of 
 stained glass. 
 
 A few steps, from the gravel walk upward, lead 
 to a sulky-looking portico, the door of which, being 
 opened, lands you in the entrance-hall. This is as 
 high as the roof of the house, and is lighted by 
 the great central front window. The floor is of 
 stone, laid down in quaint antique patterns, and the 
 broad staircase of polished oak, without carpet, is
 
 shoemakers' village. 167 
 
 in front of you. Up and up it winds until it makes 
 a pause at a broad landing-place, where there is 
 room for a duel to be very comfortably fought 
 between Lovelace and Grandison, if the appoint- 
 ment can be made. From this table-land run off 
 highways of corridors lighted by windows from 
 the back of the house, and branching out into 
 downright mazes, from room to room, recess to 
 recess, upstairs, dov/nstairs, through my lady's 
 chamber, my lord's chamber, to the offices, to the 
 garden, to the • attics, to the lofts, to Bluebeard 
 cupboards, to Skeleton Corner. Such a place for 
 hide-and-seek, in fact, as you will not find the like 
 of in any house erected within the last two hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 Built into the wall, at the top of the stairs, is an 
 old organ which shuts up like a handsome old cup- 
 board. When the locked doors of dark carved oak
 
 i68 shoemakers' village. 
 
 are slid back the yellow, furrowed key-board is 
 disclosed, and you know the fine old monster for 
 what he is. There he hides, all the long summer 
 days and long winter nights, nursing his beautiful 
 thunder, except when the touch comes that sends 
 it rolling down to the farthest cranny of this 
 wilderness of a house. 
 
 As for the rooms, they are all very lofty and full 
 of grotesque antique ornament. The mantelpieces 
 are of oak, the top slabs being held up by mer- 
 maids, nymphs, and fauns ; the fauns flourishing 
 bunches of grapes and grinning idyllic joy, all down 
 the sides of the capacious fire-places. These are 
 fitted up with old-world dog-irons, for the burning 
 of huge logs of wood : in some of the smaller 
 rooms, a modern coal-stove being set inside the 
 irons. 
 
 A house of this kind was certain to have a
 
 shoemakers' village. 169 
 
 haunted quarter. In fact, all the rooms that lay 
 next the portions of roof and wall against and over 
 which the innocent chestnut-tree shook in the sweet 
 wind his leafy rattle, were haunted. It was just 
 here that the ins and outs of the corridors and the 
 relations of the rooms to each other were the most 
 bewildering. Any one might play at hide-and-seek 
 for ever among these apartments and galleries. 
 Just as one of the partners in the game fancied he 
 had got the other fast in a cupboard, the latter 
 might have slipped out by a back way and be 
 freshening himself among the box-walks in the 
 shrubbery. Part of this neighbourhood had got the 
 ill name of Skeleton Corner. But a walnut-tree as 
 well as the chestnut-tree had something to do with 
 this. For certain rats, who had also established a 
 granary in the roof, had been in the habit of gather- 
 ing the walnuts from the boughs, carrying them
 
 170 shoemakers' village. 
 
 through a hole they had made in the wall, and 
 storing them up in a huge cupboard. There at 
 unseasonable hours for human beings these well- 
 provided animals kept high jinks and rattled the 
 walnut-shells as they lay in a heap. The servants 
 took the noise so produced to be caused by a 
 skeleton cricking his spine, and generally shaking 
 his bones about in the dark. 
 
 Once a month Miss Russett and some of the 
 older girls made up a Dorcas party, to which 
 certain ladies of the neighbourhood were in the 
 habit of coming. At these parties Cherry had been 
 found useful, and being the nice clever maiden she 
 was, full of free, fresh life, such as delighted Miss 
 Russett, she soon made good for herself a footing 
 of considerable intimacy at the Acacias — at which 
 she was accustomed to say (and with much truth) 
 she was finishing her education. It so happened
 
 shoemakers' village. 171 
 
 that these Dorcas meetings had been rather 
 numerously attended of late, and, with her usual 
 kindness. Miss Russett had invited the unamiable 
 Miss Luckin to come and help the servants — not 
 because she expected the girl would be of much 
 use, but because she thought she would learn some- 
 thing. If anybody is surprised to hear that such a 
 girl as Amelia Luckin has been described to be 
 should be invited, on any terms or for any purpose, 
 to the Acacias, I can only say he has never known 
 Miss Russett. That lady was a strong church- 
 woman — naturally enough, since her father had 
 been a clergyman, and she had once sat next to a 
 bishop at dinner, who had taken wine with her, 
 and observed, with reference to the attacks of 
 Dissent (Schism, he called it) upon ' the Church,' 
 that 'her foundations were upon the holy hills.' 
 This she often repeated. * My dear child,' she
 
 172 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 would say to Cherry, 'religious division is a 
 grievous thing in a family ; but I am glad you do 
 not go to Zohrab Chapel with your poor dear 
 mother. It is so miLcJi better to belong to the 
 Church — *' her foundations are upon the holy hills, 
 my dear ! " ' This profoundly impressed Cherry. 
 But I was about to say that Woods, too, was not 
 quite a stranger at the Acacias. An accidental 
 word in the street was enough for this good gre- 
 garious lady to found a friendship upon ; and the 
 fact is, Woods used to look in and borrow great, 
 grave, learned books out of the deceased clergy- 
 man's library. 'You know, my love,' she said to 
 Tomboy, ' we're both in the teaching way ; and I 
 love the man, though I abbawr his schism.' One 
 day Cherry and Amelia had been despatched into 
 the library to dust and arrange the books, and 
 Woods happening to look in at the time to borrow
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 1 73 
 
 one, Miss Russett led him up-stairs to get it. The 
 first thing they saw through the open door ap- 
 proaching the room was Cherry, or rather Cherry's 
 curly hair. She was seated on the low library- 
 ladder, with her feet on one of the steps. Her head 
 rested in her hands ; her elbows were on her knees ; 
 and the longer strands of her hair fell down over 
 her face. At the sound of the footsteps she looked 
 up, and, flinging back her hair with a toss, disclosed 
 a countenance which no one could ever look at with 
 indifference, and which was now full of tenderness 
 and thought — doubtless because she had been 
 reading something that touched her. Amelia 
 turned violently red as she noticed that Woods, 
 with a grave smile on his face, made a half-pause 
 before entering the room. 
 
 * Come along, White ! ' said she, angrily, ' you're 
 not wanted to sit staring there at the gentleman ! '
 
 174 SHOEIMAKERS' VILLAGE. 
 
 That night the Dorcas party stayed rather later 
 than usual, and two or three of the younger ladies 
 remained to sleep, as Cherry and Amelia often 
 did, and did now. It was part of the moral dis- 
 cipline at the Acacias that the young ladies should 
 take it in turn to sleep in the little blue bedroom in 
 Skeleton Corner, to air it, or to exorcise the ghost 
 or the skeleton, so that there was no bad omen 
 attaching to the place in the minds of anybody but 
 a servant or two, who had been heard to maintain 
 that the young ladies would sleep in that room 
 ' once too often.' 
 
 On the walls of this little bedroom were some 
 drawings and w^ater-colour sketches by young 
 ladies in Miss Russett's establishment. When 
 Tomboy went up to bed, she spent a few minutes 
 in studying these pictures. There was a group of 
 flowers, foxgloves, lilies, hyacinths, standard roses,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 175 
 
 and I know not what — a group or combination as 
 much belonging to Arcadia as the nosegay in 
 * Lycidas.' Another sketch was of the caves of 
 Staffa — and at this Cherry, who had never beheld 
 the sea, had a very prolonged look. Another piece 
 was a mere rack of moonlit cloud seen over the 
 top of a forest. After looking at these sketches 
 for a short time, and trying to make the pictures 
 over again in her mind, she just glanced out of the 
 window into the garden, thought it would rain soon, 
 and then turned herself to thoughts of sleep. With 
 the ease of sound health and an undispersed con- 
 sciousness, she glided into sound sleep within five 
 minutes of having laid her head upon the pillow. 
 But we must not think of her asleep there, until 
 we have frankly spoken of a little secret she told, 
 when the rest of the story came out — which was a 
 long time afterwards. As soon as she had dressed
 
 176 shoemakers' village. 
 
 herself in her night-gown, she tried to kneel down 
 by the side of the bed, and say her prayers as usual ; 
 but a sudden twitch of fear came over her as she 
 got her knees upon the floor, and, thinking of the 
 reputation of the place, even while she called her- 
 self names for her folly, she darted up and flung 
 herself hastily into bed, drawing the sheets close 
 over her face — she then began to repeat her even- 
 ing prayer as she lay, and with some few pauses 
 got through to the end. In flinging herself into 
 bed she had blown or swailed out the light, and 
 the room was, she knew, in darkness, except for 
 what moonlight came in at the window. Now, 
 never before, not even in the coldest winter nights, 
 had Cherry said her evening prayer in bed ; she 
 could not rest, and at last peeped out from below 
 the bedclothes. Through the side of the window- 
 blind she caught sight of the moon. It appeared
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 177 
 
 to her as if It looked reproachfully in upon her. 
 With a sudden throb of the heart she flung herself 
 out of bed, knelt down, and said every word of her 
 prayer over again like a good girl. When she had 
 got into bed again, she was asleep in a few moments. 
 The silence in the house v\'as perfect. She quickly 
 glided into a dream. Can we tell her dreams ^ 
 
 First, she dreamed she was wandering by night 
 in a garden of wonderful flowers. It w^as bright, 
 soft moonlight, but there was no moon visible in all 
 the sky. In her dream she noticed this at once, 
 and felt a passionate anxiety to know where the 
 moon was — it was awful to have her light, so clear 
 and pearly-white, without any possibility of seeing 
 her. But the flowers in this wonder-garden well 
 nigh slew her with their beauty. They were more 
 like young trees in a plantation than common 
 flowers of the parterre. There were lilies higher 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 shoemakers' village. 
 
 than her head, and foxgloves as tall as palms, so 
 that she could look up into the bells. A moth as 
 large as a bat flitted past her, and she thought how 
 beautiful the garden would look by daylight, with 
 gorgeous butterflies, larger than this moth, hover- 
 ing among the flov/ers. 
 
 But nothing seemed to stifle her desire to know 
 where the moon was. It became an anguish and 
 she nearly awoke. As she fell again into sounder 
 sleep her dream changed. She was now in a small 
 boat upon the water — not in the open uncovered 
 sea, but in a clifl" corridor of the ocean, the pillars 
 of which were high rocks, between which the water 
 flowed deeply green. Again, it was all clear moon- 
 light, but there was no moon to be seen, neither 
 overhead, nor through any vista between the cliffs. 
 The boat rocked, the cliff-columns ran far out into 
 the sea ; an anguish came over her to know vdiere
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 1 79 
 
 the beautiful moon had hidden. She thought that 
 
 if she could only get to the end of this corridor of 
 
 rock she might be able to see, for then it would 
 
 all be boundless ocean, with not a place in which 
 
 anything could hide upon all the horizon. She 
 
 put her hands upon the oars, which hitherto had 
 
 lain idly in the ruUocks, rocking with the boat ; but 
 
 before she could make one stroke with them, the 
 
 moon swam round from somewhere, right out at 
 
 the end of the long vista of cliffs, but such a large, 
 
 awful, white globe that she started in her sleep and 
 
 woke. She fancied as she woke that she heard 
 
 thunder ; but even before her eyes were fairly open 
 
 she became distinctly aware of a sound that was 
 
 not thunder from the heavens at all events. It was 
 
 one solitary note from the old organ. She heard it 
 
 as plainly as ever she had heard her mother's voice, 
 
 and then the clang of a church-bell. It was half-
 
 i8o shoemakers' village. 
 
 past one. Her first Impulse was to hide far down 
 under the bed-clothes and say the Lord's Prayer ; 
 but she was not a coward, and so, drawing a long 
 breath, she at last stepped out of bed and drew 
 aside the v/indow-blind. There was now a silence 
 as of death all around her — not a sound could 
 she hear inside or outside the house. Looking out 
 upon the garden, and across into the pretty open 
 country beyond, she saw that it was slightly raining. 
 The sky was clouded, but full of moist white light, 
 upon which the clouds seemed to lie lightly and 
 move brokenly in the v/ind. She turned round 
 again, and got into bed once more. 
 
 She had not been in the recumbent posture long 
 before she fancied she again heard a sound. What- 
 ever it was, it had the effect of directing her eyes 
 to the door of the room. Her head swam, and her 
 heart began to beat violently, for she thought she
 
 shoemakers' village. i8i 
 
 saw it slowly opening from without. She began to 
 pray — she knew not in what words. The door 
 still fascinated her eyes. It certainly did move. 
 She durst not scream ; but, not knowing what she 
 did, and simply by way of agonized appeal to 
 Heaven, she leaped out of the bed again, and fell 
 on her knees at the side, still gazing towards the 
 door. With indescribable horror she saw it pos- 
 itively pushed open about a foot, — there was no 
 fancy in the matter, — a hand came in first, then an 
 arm, and, last of all, she saw something, which 
 glittered in the faint moonlight, flung towards the 
 pillow she had that moment quitted.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 T70R the first time in her Hfe Tomboy fainted, 
 but she passed unconsciously from the swoon 
 into sleep, which continued for some time; when she 
 awoke, with a start, she found herself lying in a 
 cramped position on the carpet of the bedroom, 
 with ' pins and needles ' in the one of her arms on 
 which she had been lying. But it was now open day- 
 light, and her first distinct thought was, of course, 
 that the beautiful morning was with her, and that 
 she was safe. And safe she was. But instinctively 
 turning her eyes in the direction of the door, she 
 perceived that it had not been completely closed ;
 
 shoemakers' village. 183 
 
 it was ajar, though very sHghtly. She might pos- 
 sibly have fancied that she had fallen or leapt out 
 of her bed in the agony of an evil dream ; but the 
 fact of the door not being closed was sufficient to 
 recall, in the^'shape of history, not dream, the cir- 
 cumstances of the night which had now passed 
 away for ever. Naturally, her first clear impulse 
 was to rise and look at the pillow. She fully 
 expected to find something lying there — a knife, 
 probably ; or even a dagger — an object she had 
 never seen in all her life. She found nothing what- 
 ever ; but the pillow-case, one side of the bolster, 
 and part of the sheet were burnt into holes. 
 
 The solitary note from the old organ now re- 
 mained still unaccounted for ; but that alone. With 
 a shudder which again sent this maiden to her 
 knees, she divined in a flash of thought what had 
 been done and who had done it. But the mystery
 
 184 shoemakers' village. 
 
 of the organ-note invested the thing in her young 
 eyes, as well it might, with an awful, preternatural 
 character. In vain she endeavoured to persuade 
 herself that she had heard the sound in a dream — 
 that it was the thunder which she had fancied 
 when the moon had swung suddenly round to the 
 end of the corridor of cliff — she felt quite certain 
 the organ had actually sounded in the dead of the 
 night from which she had just emerged. And yet 
 the least feasible idea in all the world was, ob- 
 viously, that a person who contemplated throvving 
 vitriol on to the face of a sleeping person in a 
 house full of sleepers should do anything which 
 should disturb the silence which seemed essential 
 to secresy. She gave up the mystery as insoluble ; 
 and it held its place in her mind as an awful, 
 solemnizing adjunct of the very terrible danger 
 which she had escaped.
 
 shoemakers' village. 1S5 
 
 Finding the house in perfect silence, and hearing 
 without in the garden only the cheep-cheep of the 
 birds, she sat, dishevelled and pale, on the edge of 
 her bed, with her arms raised and her hands clasped 
 at the back of her head. Lost in wonder, almost 
 in a trance, she sat. In that position she inevit- 
 ably caught sight of her own fair face in the 
 glass, if she only lifted her eyes up. At last, in 
 making a movement forward towards the toilette 
 table, in order to get her Prayer-book or her Bible, 
 to one of which she was perhaps going to turn with 
 something of the half-superstitious feeling with 
 which she had, a little year or less before, turned 
 to the Oraculum, she clearly saw her own face in 
 the mirror before her. The hollowness of her eyes 
 made her look again — with more intentness and 
 more self-consciousness than she had ever looked 
 at it before in all her life. The event of the night,
 
 i86 shoemakers' village. 
 
 the fact that somebody had just thought it worth 
 while to attempt to mar it with the murderous 
 scorching stuff, awoke in her a new thought. She 
 saw and felt that she was beautiful. The fresh 
 knowledge made her cover her face with her hands : 
 she was filled with a new emotion that seemed as 
 if it should have been a pleasure, but was in truth 
 a pain. The discovery that she was lovely had 
 come to her not from words of praise or looks of 
 tenderness, but in the after-thoughts of an hour of 
 peril passed, and in connection with an unlooked- 
 for glimpse into the devilish malignity of another 
 human creature. 
 
 Cherry was not speculative, but a sense, as strong 
 as it was dim, rushed over all her being, of the 
 awful nature of this mystery of malignity in a 
 nature she did not and could not fathom. She was 
 quite unused to prayer without a dictated form of
 
 shoemakers' village. 187 
 
 words ; but a vague prayer she could not help send- 
 ing up to heaven that moment. ' O God, cast this 
 devil out of her ! ' would have been the words of 
 it, if any words had distinctly passed through her 
 mind at the moment. And then she felt calmer, 
 and formed the resolution to say nothing about 
 what she suspected, or rather knew, of the manner 
 in which the linen had got burnt. The difficulty 
 was how to manage matters so as to avoid any 
 investigation being set on foot by the servants, and 
 yet tell no untruth ; but this she contrived to do, 
 by taking into her confidence the maid she best 
 liked, and urging her to replace the damaged by 
 sound linen immediately, and to keep absolute 
 silence about it. To make her promise this was a 
 hard task, but Cherry succeeded at last ; engaging 
 to pay for new linen, in order that Miss Russctt 
 might be no loser. She had some fears, of course,
 
 i88 shoemakers' village. 
 
 that the servant-girl's love of gossip might prove 
 too strong for her resolution ; but, as it happened, 
 the resolve was kept, for some time at least. 
 Cherry steadfastly refused to tell her anything, 
 one way or the other, about the matter. The linen 
 was scorched into holes, she would replace it, and 
 she wished nothing said about it, — that was all. 
 
 But I must not close the account of the night 
 itself without adding that so perfect was the 
 balance of the girl's nature, and so healthy her 
 physique, that, after locking the door and placing 
 a chair against it, Cherry again got into bed and 
 slept soundly until late in the morning. When 
 she awoke, once more the new consciousness slid 
 into her heart — this time with warmth and music 
 in it ; and now it nestled there for an instant — the 
 consciousness that she was beautiful. As she 
 descended the great staircase, she met Miss
 
 shoemakers' village. 189 
 
 Luckin, dressed for departure. That inscrutable, 
 shocking person sHghtly started, looked her full in 
 the face, and drew nigh to kiss her. Cherry 
 repelled the kiss ; but felt a strange pity for the 
 ugly girl, and a strange wonder, almost a rebellion, 
 in her mind — why should these rattlesnake natures 
 exist, and why should there be anything ugly in all 
 the wide world } 
 
 From that hour Cherry was actually a different 
 person ; softer, more serious, more conscious, I 
 will not say of herself, but of the life around her ; 
 moving about in the world silently, tenderly, like a 
 woman, and not roughly and loudly like a hoyden 
 girl. She dressed herself that morning with 
 unusual care, and when she came down to break- 
 fast Christina Russett was struck with her altered 
 appearance. Naturally, she was rather pale, and 
 t/iat catching the eye at once, a second and third
 
 IQO SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 glance discerned, however faintly and obscurely, 
 that a change had come over poor Tomboy. Miss 
 Russett was so profoundly impressed by it that she 
 almost felt she had not done her justice up to this 
 moment ; she feared she had been treating a 
 woman too much as a child. 
 
 * My dear Miss White,' said the kind Christina, 
 ' will you do me the favour of stepping up with me 
 into my study for a moment } I want to ask your 
 .... opinion, dear ! ' added Miss Russett, in an 
 affectionate half-whisper, laying her hand on 
 Cherry's arm. When they had got upstairs into 
 the pretty little study, Christina carefully closed 
 the door, and said, 
 
 * Sit dovv'n .... here, my dear, close by me, so 
 that we can have it all to ourselves.' 
 
 And then she went on tiptoe to a choice little 
 desk, and bringing it forward to the table, un-
 
 SHOEMAKERS V I L L A Cx E. 
 
 191 
 
 locked it, and, in the most gingerly manner, pro- 
 duced from its innermost recess a few dainty-look- 
 ing letters in a man's handwriting. 
 
 ' I need not say this is all between ourselves, 
 Cherry ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes, Miss Russett,' said Cherry, wondering 
 greatly what was coming. Christina took out one 
 of the letters, looked over it carefully, gave a gentle 
 sigh, shook her head, and then, holding it flat to 
 her bosomi with her left hand, said, 
 
 * Did you ever hear of Petrarch and Laura, 
 dear ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. I have read about them.' 
 
 ' I was afraid you might not, perhaps ; but }'ou 
 pick up things in a wonderful manner.' 
 
 ' Petrarch wrote sonnets to Laura, I think.' 
 
 *Ycs! yes!' said Christina, clapping her mit- 
 tened hands with pleasant gaiety. And then.
 
 192 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 handing the letter to Cherry, and putting an arm 
 over the girl's neck — ' Look at that, and tell me 
 what you think of it ! ' 
 
 * It seems a love-letter.' 
 
 ' It seems a letter of love, dear,' replied Christina, 
 grandly. 
 
 * But it is not a sonnet.' 
 
 * No ; but there is some poetry at the end — on 
 the other side, if you look.' 
 
 ' Oh ! yes, I see — 
 
 " Our souls were made for such communion, 
 In perfect spiritual union." 
 
 Is he very religious } ' 
 
 * He always puts that at the end of every 
 letter. See,' said Christina, handing them all 
 to Cherry, who rapidly ran them over with her 
 eye. 
 
 *Who?'
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 1 93 
 
 ' That, dear, is the mystery ! I do not know 
 him ; perhaps I shall never know him.' 
 
 * He doesn't seem as if he wanted to marry you, 
 does he, Miss Russett } ' 
 
 * My dear ! ' said the lady, with rebuking eyes, 
 ' did Petrarch marry Laura } ' 
 
 For a moment Cherry felt her natural wild gaiety 
 rising in a sudden wave — she could scarcely help 
 casting a wicked, laughing eye upon Christina ; but 
 she controlled herself, and said, 
 
 ' I see. Miss Russett, he asks you to send him a 
 flower to the post-office, Hammersmith ' 
 
 ' Yes, eleven miles off — he is so mysterious, and 
 so respectful in his reserve ! ' 
 
 * That is, you are to do it if you reciprocate his 
 sentiments.' 
 
 * Yes, and tJiat is what I wish to have your 
 opinion about, Miss White. Would it, do you 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 think, be prudent to comply with his request ? ' 
 
 * I am very young to be asked such a question ; 
 but it all depends on whether you do reciprocate 
 his sentiments, I should say.' 
 
 * Yes .... that is where I feel a difficulty. He 
 certainly appears to be of a lofty nature. Look, 
 dear, at the purity of these letters. They breathe 
 a spirit of poetry which I confess . . . .' Miss 
 Russett again sighed and shook her head. 
 
 ' I think most men wish to marry a lady when 
 they love her } ' said Cherry, inquiringly. ' Pe- 
 trarch would have married Laura if he could, I 
 suppose } ' She looked puzzled. 
 
 * My dear ! ' replied Christina, ' you have not 
 sounded the mysteries of the heart ! Well, well, I 
 will take time to think of it.' 
 
 So saying, she put up the letters and replaced 
 the desk.
 
 shoemakers' village. 195 
 
 Puzzled as Cherry was, she was touched as well 
 as amused, and stood looking into Miss Russett's 
 eyes, her own filled with friendly wonder. Miss 
 Russett saw it. 
 
 ' God bless you. Cherry ! ' said she, with a hearty 
 kiss. ' There ! make haste home to your mother 
 and Timothy.' 
 
 She did go home to her mother and Timothy. 
 Her mother began, in the course of a few hours, to 
 notice, and with surprise, the increased softness, 
 depth, and reverence not only of the expression of 
 her face, but of her whole manner. She was an 
 ill-tempered, gloomy woman ; but she now tried 
 to treat her daughter with a new tenderness. She 
 thought this change in behaviour and look was the 
 sign of a work of grace in her daughter's heart. 
 And indeed it was, though not in the sense in 
 which Mrs White referred to the matter in her
 
 196 shoemakers' village. 
 
 prayers just at that time. Once a day Mrs White 
 ahvays prayed aloud with Timothy and her daugh- 
 ter. The girl began now to be a little puzzled by 
 the eagerness with which her mother, on these 
 occasions, would refer to the * smoking flax ; ' but 
 she was also pleased to find her mother relaxing in 
 the severity of watchfulness with which she had 
 been accustomed to deprecate her ' cuddling ' little 
 Timothy during the prayer-time. The child, now 
 about two years and a half old, was bright and 
 affectionate, but full of obstinacy — concerning the 
 right regimen for which there was considerable 
 difference of opinion, often running into direct 
 practical conflict, between the mother and the 
 daughter.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 "PXCEPT Cherry herself, nobody in the Village 
 took so much interest in little Timothy as Mrs 
 Salmon. In the course of a few days, when Cherry, 
 though still softened in manner and in countenance, 
 had got back some of her old briskness of tongue, 
 she made a call upon Mrs Salmon. That kind, 
 motherly person immediately noticed the change 
 in her face. 
 
 * Why, your eyes look larger, Cherry ! where 
 have you been ? You look as if you saw spirits 
 and apparitions ! ' 
 
 Cherry smiled ; but glanced at herself in the
 
 198 shoemakers' village. 
 
 glass. * I avi pretty,' she thought ; and then 
 turned to amuse one of the little Salmons, very 
 much disgusted with herself for having looked at 
 her own face. 
 
 * Ah,' resumed Mrs Salmon, seriously, ' you may 
 laugh ; I know Miss Russett and your friends 
 there laugh at ghosts, them and their book-learn- 
 ing. But what I know I know. And this I know, 
 that for more than a cent'ry, whenever anything is 
 going to happen to anybody who is sleeping in 
 that house, the old organ plays of its own ac- 
 cord.' 
 
 * Good gracious ! ' said Cherry, turning pale, * I 
 never heard that before ! ' 
 
 * There's many things in the great house as you 
 must go to the little house to hear. And don't 
 you go and mention it now I've told you — for it 
 stands to reason it wouldn't be good for the school,
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. iQy 
 
 though it's a good many years since the organ 
 blew — at least as far as I know, it is. And then 
 
 there was a murder Goodness me, girl, 
 
 don't joggle the child so violent — you'll break his 
 little back-bone.' 
 
 ' I feel a little faint,' said Cherry, giving up the 
 child to its mother, who threw up the window, and 
 let in some air, which rapidly revived the maiden. 
 But the least superstitious person might well feel 
 ' creepy ' under similar circumstances, and she 
 could not dismiss the old organ from her thoughts, 
 though she endeavoured to occupy herself with the 
 children ; and Mrs Salmon produced from a cup- 
 board something in a wine-glass which she called 
 ' rums'rub,' and — it is best to be frank — Cherry 
 had some of it, though she took it with extreme 
 reluctance, and nearly spat it out. She had the 
 peculiar hatred of strong drinks which is often
 
 200 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 found in connection with a perfectly sweet and 
 healthy body. 
 
 Mrs Salmon was a large, tall, shapeless, soft- 
 looking woman, with a face like an inflamed full 
 moon, and neither eyebrows nor lips to speak of. 
 She always looked well, and was always good- 
 tempered ; there was no guile in those little brown 
 eyes, and no greediness in that little button of a 
 mouth of hers. Of her figure it is difficult to speak 
 except vaguely, for it never had time to settle 
 down into anything permanent. It had a crisis 
 about every eighteen months, and between the 
 critical periods it was of necessity billowy and 
 uncertain. But the number of her children never 
 troubled Mrs Salmon, any more than the number 
 of the asteroids or the comets of our system, nor 
 was she any more conscious of concurrence in one 
 result than in the other.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 ' Well,' said Tomboy, taking up one of the latest 
 comers, and patting it thoughtfully as he lay across 
 her knee, ' he is a shrimp ! This makes nine, Mrs 
 Salmon, and if I was you I should think it was high 
 time to leave off.' 
 
 * Lor, Cherry ! ' said the placid mother, * how can 
 you talk so wicked } I must have my number, I 
 s'pose, like other women.' 
 
 ' Well,' replied Tomboy, ' if they get smaller 
 every time, they won't take up so much room, 
 that's one good thing ; what a shrimp he is, to be 
 sure ! ' 
 
 * Cherry,' said Mrs Salmon, * don't let Salmon 
 ever hear you call that child a srimp, I beg of you.' 
 
 ' Oh, stuff and nonsense ! ' exclaimed Cherry, ' he 
 must take it as it comes. I've got no patience 
 with the men. Hallo ! is that a new pup you've 
 got there 1 '
 
 shoemakers' village. 
 
 ' New pup, yes,' said Mrs Salmon, with the 
 faintest possible accent of irritation ; ' Salmon zvill 
 do it. He only brought me home seven and six on 
 Saturday evening, and that bull-pup as you see. 
 He will have as it's worth a sovereign if it's worth 
 a penny ; but I wish I could see the colour of the 
 money, and them as likes might have the bull-pup. 
 I had to put away my flat-iron and Salmon's shirt- 
 pin, as his mother gave him at our wedding, for of 
 course I couldn't put away the bull-pup ; and so 
 there you are again.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' says Tomboy, patting the shrimp in long 
 clothes harder than ever, ' I'd bull-pup him if I was 
 you. He goes out to earn his wages, and not to 
 ruin himself with extravagance, and bringing home 
 puppies, when this is the ninth. Bless him, then, 
 he was a shrimp, he was ! But what it expectee- 
 pect-ee if its daddy brings home a bull-pup when
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 203 
 
 he ought to bring home a joint of meat ? But there, 
 there, I didn't mean to speak disrespectfully of Mr 
 Salmon.' 
 
 * No, my dear, I knew it of you ; and where no 
 offence is took, none is intended, as the saying is. 
 And Salmon says to me, " Betsy, it's all speckila- 
 tion. We must speckilate till the right card turns 
 up, leastways the right dawg, and then I can pay 
 up my fines, and be on the books again, and we'll 
 have a house of our own." ' 
 
 Polite readers must not suppose there was any- 
 thing unconjugal or unfriendly in this exchange of 
 criticism about the absent Mr Salmon, for such 
 free comment is quite within the boundaries of 
 ordinary etiquette in the Village. Salmon's weak- 
 ness is, however, now betrayed to those who did 
 not previously know it — it is well understood among 
 the Villagers. Not content with the abounding
 
 204 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 life of his little household, this worthy man was 
 fond of gathering about him a little population of 
 the inferior creatures — rabbits, dogs, mule-canaries, 
 and such like. On a Saturday evening, when his 
 
 * heart ' was quickened and his wits were slackened 
 by the social draught with which he bade adieu to 
 the labours of the week, he was but too apt to 
 
 * speckilate ' in what he supposed to be rare speci- 
 mens of those familiar creatures. Dog-fanciers, 
 bird-catchers, and rabbit-fanciers, who knew his 
 weakness, traded upon it, and tempted him further 
 and further onward in the perilous but fascinating 
 path. He looked at it in the light of genuine 
 mercantile adventure ; it really was gambling. 
 But, some of his early risks having proved unfor- 
 tunate (lop-eared rabbits and recondite varieties of 
 guinea-pig being difficult to rear, where there are 
 eight little students of natural history eager for ex-
 
 shoemakers' village. 205 
 
 perlment), Mr Salmon lost so heavily, that he was 
 unable to pay up some ' fines,' and thus dropped 
 out of the ranks at his Building Society ; known in 
 the Village as the Brickbat Brothers. Now, as his 
 great object in life was to have a house of his own 
 (subject, of course, to the usual mortgage to the 
 Society), w^hat could he do but go on speculating in 
 these small deer, until the luck turned.? And what 
 could Mrs Salmon do but acquiesce, and cultivate 
 her little noisy brood amidst all the responsibilities 
 of a menagerie ? Mr Salmon was always good- 
 humoured, like herself; he usually came home 
 cheerful to excess, though scarcely tipsy, at the 
 end of the week, with half his wages gone, and a 
 fresh dog in his pocket, or a piping bull-finch 
 wrapped up in his handkerchief. Over the new 
 prize there was usually a conjugal word-com- 
 bat, but the happy pair always came to terms
 
 2o6 shoemakers' village. 
 
 again over some anecdote of one of the children. 
 
 * Salmon,' says Mrs Salmon, affectionately, and 
 rather bemused with the Saturday evening strong- 
 waters, ' Salmon, that child is the very moral of 
 you — he grows more and more like you every day 
 of his precious life. If you'd only a-seen him this 
 day, as he lay there on this very floor, picking out 
 a winkle with a pin ! Bless him, he knows how — 
 he is the most intelligentest ' 
 
 To return to Tomboy. She was pleased with 
 her visit to Mrs Salmon and the children, and the 
 * rum-s'rub ' got into her head, and made her a 
 little gay ; but a new want had made itself felt in 
 her bosom, though she could have given no account 
 of it. If the church had been open, she would 
 probably have gone inside, and said her prayers 
 there ; but, as it was, her feet turned instinctively 
 towards poor old Mrs Branch's, where she was
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 207 
 
 always certain of a welcome, accompanied by an 
 inscrutable tenderness, which neither her mother 
 nor even Miss Russett had. In a very few minutes 
 Mrs Branch saw through the external gaiety of 
 manner which came of the rum-s'rub, and when 
 Cherry happened to draw a deep serious sigh, 
 evidently unconscious of itself, she said — 
 
 ' My dear, have you anything on your mind } ' 
 There w^as a brief pause of silence : then Cherry 
 answered — 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 Again, silence. Mrs Branch asked no questions. 
 
 * If you could only take it to the Lord, my child 
 — if you knew the throne of grace ' 
 
 Again, silence. 
 
 * My dear, when we cannot speak to God, he can 
 speak to us all the same.' 
 
 And now Cherry fairly broke down in a fit of
 
 2o8 shoemakers' village. 
 
 crying, and embraced poor old goggled Mrs Branch 
 with all her heart. It was not the first time that 
 unspeakable wonders, doubts, longings, and fears 
 had been * taken to the Lord ' in the same inar- 
 ticulate shape.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. . 
 
 ATt /'HEN a sober-minded young man like Woods 
 drops his hat, out of nervousness, upon 
 entering the room in which there is a pretty girl 
 whom he has met before, we can, of course, draw 
 no such inference as that he is in love with her, 
 or beginning to be in love with her. But Mrs 
 Branch's question to Cherry about her age showed 
 that her mind had been running upon the possi- 
 bilities of the case. However, it is early days yet, 
 and assuredly her thoughts were not like what 
 yours and mine would be if we speculated upon 
 the matter. Certain it is that Woods was not.
 
 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 and never could be, quite at home among Mrs 
 Branch's rehgious friends, or among Cherry's 
 either, for that matter. Among the set to which 
 what we call accident had introduced him, and 
 strong religious feelings bound him, because it 
 happened to be at hand and answered to his im- 
 mediate need, he had latterly begun to experience 
 a slight sense of uneasiness. But if a man like him, 
 self-conscious and analytic, though with plenty of 
 poetic feeling, were to marry a girl like Cherry, 
 what would be the consequence ? An inmate for 
 a cradle in about a twelvemonth, I hear you say. 
 But the question is a psychological one. It is 
 certain there would always be a gulf between 
 them, for Cherry could never be made to analyze. 
 But it is also certain that there would be consider- 
 able approximation from the side of Woods.
 
 SHOE .MAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 Again, Cherry having no bad faults, no ill-temper, 
 no arriere-pensees, and no intellectual presumption, 
 — and having strong affections, fundamental rever- 
 ence for what is awful or good, and personal 
 beauty, the gulf would not be so great as to make 
 life tragic for both. Small mutual worry there 
 would be none. But, after all, when Woods had, 
 by contagion, got from her all she would teach 
 and give (which was not a little, to a man whose 
 moral regimen thus far had been so arid), there 
 must and would exist an interspace between soul 
 and soul that would be pathetic, though not dread- 
 ful. And suppose Cherry were to lose her good 
 looks } In the first place, her good looks were of 
 the kind that wears well ; in the second, they went 
 far beyond her face ; and, at the worst, it would 
 be a mutual grief, and not a heavy trouble, because
 
 212 SHOEMAKERS VILLAGE. 
 
 Woods had plenty of imaginative memory. That 
 has something to do with tenacity of attachment, to 
 the living as well as the dead. Other things being 
 equal, he who remembers most vividly will most 
 continuously love. But all this is premature. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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