One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of
sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very
high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly
to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house
near Liverpool he'd be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a
coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near
Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us
his card. "I come here every year," he said, "for the rheumatism in my
shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely
to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There's a good many 'otels
in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There's St. Ann's,
that's a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then
there's the Old Hall. That's good enough, too, but nobody goes there
except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don't mean bishops; they
go to St. Ann's."

I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was
stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn't ask him, and only said that
other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall,
for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to
take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.

"Mary Queen of Scots!" said he. "At the Old Hall?"

"Yes," said I, "that's where she used to go; that was her hotel."

"Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!" he said again. "Well, well, I
wouldn't have believed it. But them Scotch people always was
close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn't have
minded a pound a day;" and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for
forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and
having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary
Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.

But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn't give up
Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of
him. "Now," said I, "it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this
way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by
subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to
do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are
afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don't want me
walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
be pulled along with you."

The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
on a farm, that the women drive to town.

Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
agreeable spots, which they said they would do.

After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
as they can.

After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
become fixed and immovable. How such a creaky person came to be a
bath-chair man I could not think, but it may be that he wanted to stay
in Buxton for the sake of the loose gas which could be had for nothing,
and that bath-chairing was all he could get to do.

I pitied the poor old fellow, who, if he had been a horse, would have
been no more than fourteen hands high, and as he went puffing along,
tugging and grunting as if I was a load of coal, I felt as if I
couldn't stand it another minute, and I called out to him to stop. It
did seem as if he would drop before he got me back to the hotel, and I
bounced out in no time, and then I walked in front of him and turned
around and looked at him. If it is possible for a human hack-horse to
have spavins in two joints in each leg, that man had them; and he
looked as if he couldn't remember what it was to have a good feed.

He seemed glad to rest, but didn't say anything, standing and looking
straight ahead of him like an old horse that has been stopped to let
him blow. He did look so dreadful feeble that I thought it would be a
mercy to take him to some member of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals and have him chloroformed. "Look here," said I, "you
are not fit to walk. Get into that bath-chair, and I'll pull you back
to your stand."

"Lady," said he, "I couldn't do that. If you dunno mind walking home,
and will pay me for the two hours all the same, I will be right
thankful for that. I'm poorly to-day."

"Get into the chair," said I, "and I'll pull you back. I'd like to do
it, for I want some exercise."

"Oh, no, no!" said he. "That would be a sin; and besides I was engaged
to pull you two hours, and I must be paid for that."

"Get into that chair," I said, "and I'll pay you for your two hours and
give you a shilling besides."

He looked at me for a minute, and then he got into the chair, and I
shut him up.

"Now, lady," said he, "you can pull me a little way if you want
exercise, and as soon as you are tired you can stop, and I'll get out,
but you must pay me the extra shilling all the same."

"All right," said I, and taking hold of the handle I started off. It
was real fun; the bath-chair rolled along beautifully, and I don't
believe the old man weighed much more than my Corinne when I used to
push her about in her baby carriage. We were in a back street, where
there was hardly anybody; and as for Jone and his bath-chair, I could
just see them ever so far ahead, so I started to catch up, and as the
street was pretty level now I soon got going at a fine rate. I hadn't
had a bit of good exercise for a long time, and this warmed me up and
made me feel gay.

[Illustration: "STOP, LADY, AND I'LL GET OUT"]

We was not very far behind Jone when the man began to call to me in a
sort of frightened fashion, as if he thought I was running away.
"Stop, lady!" he said; "we are getting near the gardens, and the people
will laugh at me. Stop, lady, and I'll get out." But I didn't feel a
bit like stopping; the idea had come into my head that it would be
jolly to beat Jone. If I could pass him and sail on ahead for a little
while, then I'd stop and let my old man get out and take his bath-chair
home. I didn't want it any more.

Just as I got close up behind Jone, and was about to make a rush past
him, his man turned into a side street. Of course I turned too, and
then I put on steam, and, giving a laugh as I turned around to look at
Jone, I charged on, intending to stop in a minute and have some fun in
hearing what Jone had to say about it; but you may believe, ma'am, that
I was amazed when I saw only a little way in front of me the bath-chair
stand where we had hired our machines! And all the bath-chair men were
standing there with their mouths wide open, staring at a woman running
along the street, pulling an old bath-chair man in a bath-chair! For a
second I felt like dropping the handle I held and making a rush for the
front door of the hotel, which was right ahead of me; and then I
thought, as now I was in for it, it would be a lot better to put a good
face on the matter, and not look as if I had done anything I was
ashamed of, and so I just slackened speed and came up in fine style at
the door of the Old Hall. Four or five of the bath-chair men came
running across the street to know if anything had happened to the old
party I was pulling, and he got out looking as ashamed as if he had
been whipped by his wife.

"It's a lark, mates," said he; "the lady's to pay me two shillings
extra for letting her pull me."

"Two shillings?" said I. "I only promised you one."

"That would be for pulling me a little way," he said; "but you pulled
me all the way back, and I couldn't do it for less than two shillings."

Jone now came up and got out quick.

"What's the meaning of all this, Pomona?" said he.

"Meaning?" said I. "Look at that dilapidated old bag of bones. He
wasn't fit to pull me, and so I thought it would be fun to pull him;
but, of course, I didn't know when I turned the corner I would be here
at the stand."

Jone paid the men, including the two extra shillings, and when we went
up to our room he said, "The next time we go out in two bath-chairs, I
am going to have a chain fastened to yours, and I'll have hold of the
other end of it."




_Letter Number Eighteen_


BUXTON

I have begun to take the baths. There really is so little to do in this
place that I couldn't help it, and so, while Jone was off tending to
his hot soaks, I thought I might as well try the thing myself. At any
rate it would fill up the time when I was alone. I find I like this
sort of bathing very much, and I wish I had begun it before. It reminds
me of a kind of medicine for colds that you used to make for me, madam,
when I first came to the canal-boat. It had lemons and sugar in it, and
it was so good I remember I used to think that I would like to go into
a lingering consumption, so that I could have it three times a day,
until I finally passed away like a lily on a snowbank.

Jone's been going about a good deal in a bath-chair, and doesn't mind
my walking alongside of him. He says it makes him feel easier in his
mind, on the whole.

Mr. Poplington came two or three days ago, and he is stopping at our
hotel. We three have hired a carriage together two or three times and
have taken drives into, the country. Once we went to an inn, the Cat
and Fiddle, about five miles away, on a high bit of ground called Axe
Edge. It is said to be the highest tavern in England, and it's lucky
that it is, for that's the only recommendation it's got. The sign in
front of the house has on it a cat on its hind-legs playing a fiddle,
with a look on its face as if it was saying, "It's pretty poor, but
it's the best I can do for you."

Inside is another painting of a cat playing a fiddle, and truly that
one might be saying, "Ha! Ha! You thought that that picture on the sign
was the worst picture you ever saw in your life, but now you see how
you are mistaken."

Up on that high place you get the rain fresher than you do in Buxton,
because it hasn't gone so far through the air, and it's mixed with more
chilly winds than anywhere else in England, I should say. But everybody
is bound to go to the Cat and Fiddle at least once, and we are glad we
have been there, and that it is over. I like the places near the town a
great deal better, and some of them are very pretty. One day we two and
Mr. Poplington took a ride on top of a stage to see Haddon Hall and
Chatsworth.

Haddon Hall is to me like a dream of the past come true. Lots of other
old places have seemed like dreams, but this one was right before my
eyes, just as it always was. Of course, you must have read all about
it, madam, and I am not going to tell it over again. But think of it; a
grand old baronial mansion, part of it built as far back as the eleven
hundreds, and yet in good condition and fit to live in. That is what I
thought as I walked through its banqueting hall and courts and noble
chambers. "Why," said I to Jone, "in that kitchen our meals could be
cooked; at that table we could eat them; in these rooms we could sleep;
in these gardens and courts we could roam; we could actually live
here!" We haven't seen any other romance of the past that we could say
that about, and to this minute it puzzles me how any duke in this world
could be content to own a house like this and not live in it. But I
suppose he thinks more of water-pipes and electric lights than he does
of the memories of the past and time-hallowed traditions.

As for me, if I had been Dorothy Vernon, there's no man on earth, not
even Jone, that could make me run away from such a place as Haddon
Hall. They show the stairs down which she tripped with her lover when
they eloped; but if it had been me, it would have been up those stairs
I would have gone. Mr. Poplington didn't agree a bit with me about the
joy of living in this enchanting old house, and neither did Jone, I am
sure, although he didn't say so much. But then, they are both men, and
when it comes to soaring in the regions of romanticism you must not
expect too much of men.

After leaving Haddon Hall, which I did backward, the coach took us to
Chatsworth, which is a different sort of a place altogether. It is a
grand palace, at least it was built for one, but now it is an enormous
show place, bright and clean and sleek, and when we got there we saw
hundreds of visitors waiting to go in. They was taken through in squads
of about fifty, with a man to lead them, which he did very much as if
they was a drove of cattle.

The man who led our squad made us step along lively, and I must say
that never having been in a drove before, Jone and I began to get
restive long before we got through. As for the show, I like the British
Museum a great deal better. There is ever so much more to see there,
and you have time to stop and look at things. At Chatsworth they charge
you more, give you less, and treat you worse. When it came to taking us
through the grounds, Jone and I struck. We left the gang we was with,
and being shown where to find a gate out of the place, we made for that
gate and waited until our coach was ready to take us back to Buxton.

It is a lot of fun going to the theatre here. It doesn't cost much, and
the plays are good and generally funny, and a rheumatic audience is a
very jolly one. The people seemed glad to forget their backs, their
shoulders, and their legs, and they are ready to laugh at things that
are only half comic, and keep up a lively chattering between the acts.
It's fun to see them when the play is over. The bath-chairs that have
come after some of them are brought right into the building, and are
drawn up just like carriages after the theatre. The first time we went I
wanted Jone to stop a while and see if we didn't hear somebody call
out, "Mrs. Barchester's bath-chair stops the way!" but he said I
expected too much, and would not wait.

We sit about so much in the gardens, which are lively when it is clear,
and not bad even in a little drizzle, that we've got to know a good
many of the people; and although Jone's a good deal given to reading, I
like to sit and watch them and see what they are doing.

When we first came here I noticed a good-looking young woman who was
hauled about in a bath-chair, generally with an open book in her lap,
which she never seemed to read much, because she was always gazing
around as if she was looking for something. Before long I found out
what she was looking for, for every day, sooner or later, generally
sooner, there came along a bath-chair with a good-looking young man in
it. He had a book in his lap too, but he was never reading it when I
saw him, because he was looking for the young woman; and as soon as
they saw each other they began to smile, and as they passed they always
said something, but didn't stop. I wondered why they didn't give their
pullers a rest and have a good talk if they knew each other, but before
long I noticed not very far behind the young lady's bath-chair was
always another bath-chair with an old gentleman in it with a
bottle-nose. After a while I found out that this was the young lady's
father, because sometimes he would call to her and have her stop, and
then she generally seemed to get some sort of a scolding.

Of course, when I see anything of this kind going on, I can't help
taking one side or the other, and as you may well believe, madam, I
wouldn't be likely to take that of the old bottle-nosed man's side. I
had not been noticing these people for more than two or three days when
one morning, when Jone and me was sitting under an umbrella, for there
was a little more rain than common, I saw these two young people in
their bath-chairs, coming along side by side, and talking just as hard
as they could. At first I was surprised, but I soon saw how things was:
the old gentleman couldn't come out in the rain. It was plain enough
from the way these two young people looked at each other that they was
in love, and although it most likely hurt them just as much to come out
into the rain as it would the old man, love is all-powerful, even over
rheumatism.

Pretty soon the clouds cleared away without notice, as they do in this
country, and it wasn't long before I saw, away off, the old man's
bath-chair coming along lively. His bottle-nose was sticking up in the
air, and he was looking from one side to the other as hard as he could.
The two lovers had turned off to the right and gone over a little
bridge and I couldn't see them; but by the way that old nose shook as
it got nearer and nearer to me, I saw they had reason to tremble,
though they didn't know it.

When the old father reached the narrow path he did not turn down it,
but kept straight on, and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. But the
next instant I remembered that the broad path turned not far beyond,
and that the little one soon ran into it, and so it could not be long
before the father and the lovers would meet. I like to tell Jone
everything I am going to do, when I am sure that he'll agree with me
that it is right; but this time I could not bother with explanations,
and so I just told him to sit still for a minute, for I wanted to see
something, and I walked after the young couple as fast as I could. When
I got to them, for they hadn't gone very far, I passed the young
woman's bath-chair, and then I looked around and I said to her, "I beg
your pardon, miss, but there is an old gentleman looking for you; but
as I think he is coming round this way, you'll meet him if you keep on
this path." "Oh, my!" said she unintentionally; and then she thanked me
very much, and I went on and turned a corner and went back to Jone, and
pretty soon the young man's bath-chair passed us going toward the
gate, he looking three-quarters happy, and the other quarter
disappointed, as lovers are if they don't get the whole loaf.

From that day until yesterday, which was a full week, I came into the
gardens every morning, sometimes even when Jone didn't want to come,
because I wanted to see as much of this love business as I could. For
my own use in thinking of them I named the young man Pomeroy and the
young woman Angelica, and as for the father, I called him Snortfrizzle,
being the worst name I could think of at the time. But I must wait
until my next letter to tell you the rest of the story of the lovers,
and I am sure you will be as much interested in them as I was.




_Letter Number Nineteen_


[Illustration]

BUXTON

I have a good many things to tell you, for we leave Buxton to-morrow,
but I will first finish the story of Angelica and Pomeroy. I think the
men who pulled the bath-chairs of the lovers knew pretty much how
things was going, for whenever they got a chance they brought their
chairs together, and I often noticed them looking out for the old
father, and if they saw him coming they would move away from each other
if they happened to be together.

If Snortfrizzle's puller had been one of the regular bath-chair men
they might have made an agreement with him so that he would have kept
away from them; but he was a man in livery, with a high hat, who walked
very regular, like a high-stepping horse, and who, it was plain enough
to see, never had anything to do with common bath-chair men. Old
Snortfrizzle seemed to be smelling a rat more and more--that is, if it
is proper to liken Cupid to such an animal--and his nose seemed to get
purpler and purpler. I think he would always have kept close to
Angelica's chair if it hadn't been that he had a way of falling asleep,
and whenever he did this his man always walked very slow, being
naturally lazy. Two or three times I have seen Snortfrizzle wake up,
shout to his man, and make him trot around a clump of trees and into
some narrow path where he thought his daughter might have gone.

Things began to look pretty bad, for the old man had very strong
suspicions about Pomeroy, and was so very wide awake when he was awake,
that I knew it couldn't be long before he caught the two together, and
then I didn't believe that Angelica would ever come into these gardens
again.

It was yesterday morning that I saw old Snortfrizzle with his chin down
on his shirt bosom, snoring so steady that his hat heaved, being very
slowly pulled along a shady walk, and then I saw his daughter, who was
not far ahead of him, turn into another walk, which led down by the
river. I knew very well that she ought not to turn into that walk,
because it didn't in any way lead to the place where Pomeroy was
sitting in his bath-chair behind a great clump of bushes and flowers,
with his face filled with the most lively emotions, but overspread
ever and anon by a cloudlet of despair on account of the approach of
the noontide hour, when Angelica and Snortfrizzle generally went home.

[Illustration: "Your brother is over there"]

The time was short, and I believed that love's young dream must be put
off until the next day if Angelica could not be made aware where
Pomeroy was sitting, or Pomeroy where Angelica was going; so I got
right up and made a short cut down a steep little path, and, sure
enough, I met her when I got to the bottom. "I beg your pardon very
much, miss," said I, "but your brother is over there in the entrance to
the cave, and I think he has been looking for you." "My brother?" said
she, turning as red as her ribbons was blue. "Oh, thank you very much!
Robertson, you may take me that way."

It wasn't long before I saw those two bath-chairs alongside of each
other, and covered from general observation by masses of blooming
shrubbery. As I had been the cause of bringing them together I thought
I had a right to look at them a little while, as that would be the only
reward I'd be likely to get, and so I did it. It was as I thought;
things was coming to a climax; the bath-chair men standing with much
consideration with their backs to their vehicles, and, united for the
time being by their clasped hands, the lovers grew tender to a degree
which I would have fain checked, had I been nearer, for fear of notice
by passers-by.

But now my blood froze within my veins. I would never have believed
that a man in a high hat and livery a size too small for him could run,
but Snortfrizzle's man did, and at a pace which ought to have been
prohibited by law. I saw him coming from an unsuspected quarter, and
swoop around that clump of flowers and foliage. Regardless of
consequences I approached nearer. There was loud voices; there was
exclamations; there was a rattling of wheels; there was the sundering
of tender ties!

In a moment Pomeroy, who had backed off but a little way, began to
speak, but his voice was drowned in the thunder of Snortfrizzle's
denunciations. Angelica wept, and her head fell upon her lovely bosom,
and I am sure I heard her implore her man to remove her from the scene.
Pomeroy remained, his face firm, his eyes undaunted, but Snortfrizzle
shook his fist in unison with his nose, and, hurling an anathema at
him, followed his daughter, probably to incarcerate her in her
apartments.

All was over, and I returned to Jone with a heavy heart and faltering
step. I could not but feel that I had brought about the sad end of this
tender chapter in the lives of Pomeroy and Angelica. If I had let them
alone they would not have met and they would not have been discovered
together. I didn't tell Jone what had happened, because he does not
always sympathize with me in my interest in others, and for hours my
heart was heavy.

It was about a half an hour before dinner that day when I thought that
a little walk might raise my spirits, and I wandered into the gardens,
for which we each have a weekly ticket, and there, to my amazement, not
far from the gate I saw Angelica in tears and her bath-chair. Her man
was not with her, and she was alone. When she saw me she looked at me
for a minute, and then she beckoned to me to come to her. I flew. There
were but few people in the gardens, and we was alone.

"Madam," said she, "I think you must be very kind. I believe you knew
that gentleman was not my brother. He is not."

"My dear miss," said I--I was almost on the point of calling her
Angelica--"I knew that. I know that he is something nearer and dearer
than even a brother."

She blushed. "Yes," said she, "you are right, and we are in great
trouble."

"Oh, what is it? Tell me quick. What can I do to help you?"

"My father is very angry," said she, "and has forbidden me ever to see
him again, and he is going to take me home to-morrow. But we have
agreed to fly together to-day. It is our only chance, but he is not
here. Oh, dear! I do not know what I shall do."

"Where are you going to fly to?" said I.

"We want to take the Edinburgh train this evening if there is one," she
said, "and we get off at Carlisle, and from there it is only a little
way to Gretna Green."

"Gretna Green!" I cried. "Oh, I will help you! I will help you! Why
isn't the gentleman here, and where has he gone?"

"He has gone to see about the trains," she said, almost crying, "and I
don't see what keeps him. I could not get away until father went into
his room to dress for dinner, and as soon as he is ready he will call
for me. Where can he be? I have sent my man to look for him."

"Oh, I'll go look for him! You wait here," I cried, forgetting that
she would have to, and away I went.

As I was hurrying out of the gates of the gardens I looked in the
direction of the railroad station, and there I saw Pomeroy pulled by
one bath-chair man and the other one talking to him. In twenty bounds I
reached him. "Go back for your young lady," I cried to Robertson,
Angelica's man, "and bring her here on the run. She sent me for you."
Away went Robertson, and then I said to the astonished Pomeroy, "Sir,
there is no time for explanations. Your lady-love will be with you in a
minute. My husband and I are going to Edinburgh to-morrow, and I have
looked up all the trains. There is one which leaves here at twenty
minutes past six. If she comes soon you will have time to catch it.
Have you your baggage ready?"

He looked at me as if he wondered who on earth I was, but I am sure he
saw my soul in my face and trusted me.

"Yes," he said, "she has a little bag in her bath-chair, and mine is
here."

"Here she comes," said I, "and you must fly to the station."

In a moment Angelica was with us, her face beaming with delight.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she cried, but I would not listen to her
gratitude. "Hurry!" I said, "or you will be too late. Joy go with
you."

They hastened off, and I walked back to the gardens. I looked at my
watch, and to my horror I saw it was five minutes past six. Fifteen
minutes left yet. Fifteen minutes in which they might be overtaken. I
stopped for a moment irresolutely. What should I do? I thought of
running after them to the station. I thought in some way I might help
them--buy their tickets or do something. But while I was thinking I
heard a rattle, and down the street came the man in livery, and
Snortfrizzle's bottle-nose like a volcano behind him. The minute they
reached me, and there was nobody else in the street, the old man
shouted, "Hi! Have you seen two bath-chairs with a young man and a
young woman in them?"

I was on the point of saying No, but changed my mind like a flash. "Did
the young lady wear a hat with blue ribbons?" I asked.

"Yes!" he roared. "Which way did they go?"

"And did the young man with her wear eyeglasses and a brown moustache?"

"With her, was he?" screamed Snortfrizzle. "That's the rascal. Which
way did they go? Tell me instantly."

When I was a very little girl I knew an old woman who told me that if a
person was really good at heart, the holy angels would allow that
person, in the course of her life, twelve fibs without charge, provided
they was told for the good of somebody and not to do harm. Now at
such a moment as this I could not remember how many fibs of that kind I
had left over to my credit, but I knew there must be at least one, and
so I didn't hesitate a second. "They have gone to the Cat and Fiddle,"
said I. "I heard them tell their bath-chair men so, as they urged them
forward at the top of their speed. They stopped for a second here, sir,
and I heard the gentleman send a cabman for a clergyman, post haste, to
meet them at the Cat and Fiddle."

[Illustration: TO THE CAT AND FIDDLE]

If the sky had been lighted up by the eruption of Snortfrizzle's nose I
should not have been surprised.

"The fools! They can't! Cat and Fiddle! But they can't be half way
there. Martin, to the Cat and Fiddle!"

The man touched his hat. "But I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't run
to the Cat and Fiddle. It's long miles, sir. Shall I get a carriage?"

"Carriage!" cried the old man, and then he began to look about him.

Horror struck me. Perhaps they would go to the station for one! Just
then a boy driving a pony and a grocery cart came up.

"There you are, sir," I cried. "Hire that boy to tow you. Your butler
can sit in the back of the cart and hold the handle of your bath-chair.
It may take long to get a carriage, and the cart will go much faster.
You may overtake them in a mile."

Old Snortfrizzle never so much as thanked me or looked at me. He yelled
to the boy in the cart, offered him ten shillings and sixpence to give
him a tow, and in less time than I could take to write it, that flunky
with a high hat was sitting in the tail of the cart, the pony was going
at full gallop, and the old man's bath-chair was spinning on behind it
at a great rate.

I did not leave that spot--standing statue-like and looking along both
roads--until I heard the rumble of the departing train, and then I
repaired to the Old Hall, my soul uplifted. I found Jone in an awful
fluster about my being out so late; but I do stay pretty late sometimes
when I walk by myself, and so he hadn't anything new to say.




_Letter Number Twenty_


EDINBURGH

We have been here five or six days now, but the first thing I must
write is the rest of the story of the lovers. We left Buxton the next
day after their flight, and I begged Jone to stop at Carlisle and let
us make a little trip to Gretna Green. I wanted to see the place that
has been such a well-spring of matrimonial joys, and besides, I thought
we might find Pomeroy and Angelica still there.

I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
was doing, or what he did.

Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.

They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
"Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
bath-chair.

"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
"How long have you been in Buxton?"

"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
husband"--oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
this--"has been there one day longer."

"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
for five days."

"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
congratulations, we parted.

And now I must tell you about ourselves. When Jone had been three weeks
at Buxton, and done all the things he ought to do, and hadn't done
anything he oughtn't to do, he hadn't any more rheumatism in him than a
squirrel that jumps from bough to bough. But will you believe it,
madam, I had such a rheumatism in one side and one arm that it made me
give little squeaks when I did up my back hair, and it all came from my
taking the baths when there wasn't anything the matter with me; for I
found out, but all too late, that while the waters of Buxton will cure
rheumatism in people that's got it, they will bring it out in people
who never had it at all. We was told that we ought not to do anything
in the bathing line without the advice of a doctor; but those little
tanks in the floors of the bathrooms, all lined with tiles and filled
with warm, transparent water, that you went down into by marble steps,
did seem so innocent, that I didn't believe there was no need in asking
questions about them. Jone wanted me to stay three weeks longer until I
was cured, but I wouldn't listen to that. I was wild to get to
Scotland, and as my rheumatism did not hinder me from walking, I didn't
mind what else it did.

And there is another thing I must tell you. One day when I was sitting
by myself on The Slopes waiting for Jone, about lunch time, and with a
reminiscence floating through my mind of the Devonshire clotted cream
of the past, never perhaps to return, I saw an elderly woman coming
along, and when she got near she stopped and spoke. I knew her in an
instant. She was the old body we met at the Babylon Hotel, who told us
about the cottage at Chedcombe. I asked her to sit down beside me and
talk, because I wanted to tell her what good times we had had, and how
we liked the place, but she said she couldn't, as she was obliged to go
on.

"And did you like Chedcombe?" said she. "I hope you and your husband
kept well."

I said yes, except Jone's rheumatism, we felt splendid; for my aches
hadn't come on then, and I was going on to gush about the lovely
country she had sent us to, but she didn't seem to want to listen.

"Really," said she, "and your husband had the rheumatism. It was a
wise thing for you to come here. We English people have reason to be
proud of our country. If we have our banes, we also have our antidotes;
and it isn't every country that can say that, is it?"

[Illustration: "And did you like Chedcombe?"]

I wanted to speak up for America, and tried to think of some good
antidote with the proper banes attached; but before I could do it she
gave her head a little wag, and said, "Good morning; nice weather,
isn't it?" and wobbled away. It struck me that the old body was a
little lofty, and just then Mr. Poplington, who I hadn't noticed, came
up.

"Really," said he, "I didn't know you was acquainted with the
Countess."

"The which?" said I.

"The Countess of Mussleby," said he, "that you was just talking to."

"Countess!" I cried. "Why, that's the old person who recommended us to
go to Chedcombe."

"Very natural," said he, "for her to do that, for her estates lie south
of Chedcombe, and she takes a great interest in the villages around
about, and knows all the houses to let."

I parted from him and wandered away, a sadness stealing o'er my soul.
Gone with the recollections of the clotted cream was my visions of
diamond tiaras, tossing plumes, and long folds of brocades and laces
sweeping the marble floors of palaces. If ever again I read a novel
with a countess in it, I shall see the edge of a yellow flannel
petticoat and a pair of shoes like two horse-hair bags, which was the
last that I saw of this thunderbolt into the middle of my visions of
aristocracy.

Jone and me got to like Buxton very much. We met many pleasant people,
and as most of them had a chord in common, we was friendly enough. Jone
said it made him feel sad in the smoking-room to see the men he'd got
acquainted with get well and go home, but that's a kind of sadness that
all parties can bear up under pretty well.

I haven't said a word yet about Scotland, though we have been here a
week, but I really must get something about it into this letter. I was
saying to Jone the other day that if I was to meet a king with a crown
on his head I am not sure that I should know that king if I saw him
again, so taken up would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.

It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
Street.

But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
of the figures that's carved on it.

I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
like this; glory ought to begin at home.




_Letter Number Twenty-one_


EDINBURGH

Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
goes. Some of the streets are so steep you have to go up steps if you
are walking, and about a mile around if you are driving. I never get
tired wandering about the Old Town with its narrow streets and awfully
tall houses, with family washes hanging out from every story.

The closes are queer places. They are very like little villages set
into the town as if they was raisins in a pudding. You get to them by
alleys or tunnels, and when you are inside you find a little
neighborhood that hasn't anything more to do with the next close, a
block away, than one country village has with another.

We went to see John Knox's house, and although Mr. Knox was pretty hard
on vanities and frivolities, he didn't mind having a good house over
his head, with woodwork on the walls and ceilings that wasn't any more
necessary than the back buttons on his coat.

We have been reading hard since we have been in Edinburgh, and whenever
Mr. Knox and Mary Queen of Scots come together, I take Mary's side
without asking questions. I have no doubt Mr. Knox was a good man, but
if meddling in other people's business gave a person the right to have
a monument, the top of his would be the first thing travellers would
see when they come near Edinburgh.

When we went to Holyrood Palace it struck me that Mary Queen of Scots
deserved a better house. Of course, it wasn't built for her, but I
don't care very much for the other people who lived in it. The rooms
are good enough for an ordinary household's use, although the little
room that she had her supper party in when Rizzio was killed, wouldn't
be considered by Jone and me as anything like big enough for our family
to eat in. But there is a general air about the place as if it belonged
to a royal family that was not very well off, and had to abstain from a
good deal of grandeur.

If Mary Queen of Scots could come to life again, I expect the Scotch
people would give her the best palace that money could buy, for they
have grown to think the world of her, and her pictures blossom out all
over Edinburgh like daisies in a pasture field.

The first morning after we got here I was as much surprised as if I had
met Mary Queen of Scots walking along Prince Street with a parasol over
her head. We were sitting in the reading-room of the hotel, and on the
other side of the room was a long desk at which people was sitting,
writing letters, all with their backs to us. One of these was a young
man wearing a nice light-colored sack coat, with a shiny white collar
sticking above it, and his black derby hat was on the desk beside him.
When he had finished his letter he put a stamp on it and got up to mail
it. I happened to be looking at him, and I believe I stopped breathing
as I sat and stared. Under his coat he had on a little skirt of green
plaid about big enough for my Corinne when she was about five years
old, and then he didn't wear anything whatever until you got down to
his long stockings and low shoes. I was so struck with the feeling that
he was an absent-minded person that I punched Jone and whispered to him
to go quick and tell him. Jone looked at him and laughed, and said that
was the Highland costume.

Now if that man had had his martial plaid wrapped around him, and had
worn a Scottish cap with a feather in it and a long ribbon hanging down
his back, with his claymore girded to his side, I wouldn't have been
surprised; for this is Scotland, and that would have been like the
pictures I have seen of Highlanders. But to see a man with the upper
half of him dressed like a clerk in a dry goods store and the lower
half like a Highland chief, was enough to make a stranger gasp.

[Illustration: "Jone looked at him and said that was the Highland
costume."]

But since then I have seen a good many young men dressed that way. I
believe it is considered the tip of the fashion. I haven't seen any of
the bare-legged dandies yet with a high silk hat and an umbrella, but I
expect it won't be long before I meet one. We often see the Highland
soldiers that belong to the garrison at the castle, and they look
mighty fine with their plaid shawls and their scarfs and their
feathers; but to see a man who looks as if one half of him belonged to
London Bridge and the other half to the Highland moors, does look to
me like a pretty bad mixture.

I am not so sure, either, that the whole Highland dress isn't better
suited to Egypt, where it doesn't often rain, than to Scotland. Last
Saturday we was at St. Giles's Church, and the man who took us around
told us we ought to come early next morning and see the military
service, which was something very fine; and as Jone gave him a shilling
he said he would be on hand and watch for us, and give us a good place
where we could see the soldiers come in. On Sunday morning it rained
hard, but we was both at the church before eight o'clock, and so was a
good many other people, but the doors was shut and they wouldn't let us
in. They told us it was such a bad morning that the soldiers could not
come out, and so there would be no military service that day. I don't
know whether those fine fellows thought that the colors would run out
of their beautiful plaids, or whether they would get rheumatism in
their knees; but it did seem to me pretty hard that soldiers could not
come out in the weather that lots of common citizens didn't seem to
mind at all. I was a good deal put out, for I hate to get up early for
nothing, but there was no use saying anything, and all we could do was
to go home, as all the other people with full suits of clothes did.

Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is
very well we are both able to skip around lively. Of course there are
ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can't do it,
but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the "Lady of the
Lake." We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I
ever did that he is perfectly splendid. While we was in Edinburgh we
felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford. I shall not say
much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter
Scott's library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the
desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave
me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral
yet.

As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering
walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty
vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a
different way of thinking, and we left all too soon. But one thing I
did do: I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was
shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it,
though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a
piece of moss and a weed. We don't do much in the way of carrying off
such things, but I want Corinne to read the "Lady of the Lake," and
then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got
them. I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be
more like me than like Jone.

To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks
in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at
the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if
they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
good care, too.




_Letter Number Twenty-two_


[Illustration]

KINLOCH RANNOCH.

It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
he used to be--I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
the change--he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.