LITMIR.BIZ

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miss a sight o’ this for a pension o’ ’taters.”

      The horses were stopped. Sorry-looking nags they were, with coffin heads, bony rumps, and sadly swollen legs.

      “Well I never!”

      “Sure there was never sich a wan as that afore on the road!”

      “Why, look at her, Sally! Look at her, Jim! Up and down, and roun’ and roun’, and back and fore. Why, Bill! I say, that wan’s as complete as a marriage certificate or a summons for assault.”

      We people inside felt the compliment.

      But we did not show.

      “Hi, missus!” cried one; “are ye in, missus? Surely a wan like that wouldn’t be athout a missus. Will ye buy a basket, missus? Show your cap and your bonny face, missus. Would ye no obleege us with just one blink at ye?”

      They went away at last, and soon after we got Matilda in and followed.

      With her head towards home, and hard, level road, Matilda trotted now, and laughed louder than ever.

      But soon the road began to rise; we had to climb the long, steep Maidenhead hill.

      And just then the storm of rain and hail broke right in our teeth. At the middle of the hill it was at its worst, but the mare strode boldly on, and finally we were on fairly level road and drew up under some lime-trees.

      The distance from Twyford to Maidenhead is nine miles, so we took it as easy going: as we had done coming.

      We had meant to have tea in the thicket, but I found at the last moment I had forgotten the water. There was nothing for it but to “bide a wee.”

      We stopped for half-an-hour in the thicket, nevertheless, to admire the scenery. Another storm was coming up, but as yet the sun shone brightly on the woods beyond the upland, and the effect was very beautiful. The tree masses were of every colour – green elms and limes, yellowed-leaved oaks, dark waving Scottish pines, and black and elfin-looking yews, with here and there a copper beech.

      But the storm came on apace. The last ray of sunlight struck athwart a lime, making its branches look startlingly green against the dark purple of the thundercloud.

      Then a darting, almost blinding flash, and by-and-bye the peal of thunder.

      The storm came nearer and nearer, so that soon the thunder-claps followed the flashes almost instantly.

      Not until the rain and hail came on did the blackbirds cease to flute or the swallows to skim high overhead. How does this accord with the poet Thomson’s description of the behaviour of animals during a summer thunderstorm, or rather the boding silence that precedes it? —

      “Prone to the lowest vale the aerial tribes

      Descend. The tempest-loving raven scarce

      Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze

      The cattle stand,” etc.

      Our birds and beasts in Berkshire are not nearly so frightened at thunder as those in Thomson’s time must have been, but then there were no railway trains in Thomson’s time!

      The poet speaks of unusual darkness brooding in the sky before the thunder raises his tremendous voice. This is so; I have known it so dark, or dusk rather, that the birds flew to roost and bats came out. But it is not always that “a calm” or “boding silence reigns.” Sometimes the wind sweeps here and there in uncertain gusts before the storm, the leaf-laden branches bending hither and thither before them.

      We came to a part of the road at last where the gable end of a pretty porter’s lodge peeped over the trees, and here pulled up. The thunder was very loud, and lightning incessant, only it did not rain then. Nothing deterred, Lovat, kettle in hand, lowered himself from the coupé and disappeared to beg for water. As there was no other house near at hand it was natural for the good woman of the lodge, seeing a little boy with a fisherman’s red cap on, standing at her porch begging for water, to ask, – “Wherever do you come from?” Lovat pointed upwards in the direction of the caravan, which was hidden from view by the trees, and said, —

      “From up there.”

      “Do ye mean to tell me,” she said, “that you dropped out of the clouds in a thunderstorm with a tin-kettle in your hand?”

      But he got the water, the good lady had her joke, and we had tea.

      The storm grew worse after this. Inez grew frightened, and asked me to play.

      “Do play the fiddle, pa!” she beseeched. So, while the “Lightning gleamed across the rift,” and the thunder crashed overhead, “pa” fiddled, even as Nero fiddled when Rome was burning.

      Chapter Four.

      Twyford and the Regions around it

      “I heard a thousand blended notes

      While in a grove I sat reclined

      In that sweet moor, when pleasant thoughts

      Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

      “One moment now may give us more

      Than fifty years of reason;

      Our minds shall drink at every pore

      The spirit of the season.”

Wordsworth.

      Not to say a word about Twyford – the village that has given me birth and bield for ten long years – would be more than unkind, it would be positively ungrateful.

      I must hasten to explain, however, that the Twyford referred to is THE Twyford – Twyford, Berks. About a dozen other Twyfords find their names recorded in the Postal Guide, from each and all of which we hold ourselves proudly aloof. Has Twyford the Great then, it may reasonably enough be asked, anything in particular to boast of? Well, methinks to belong to so charming a county as that of Berks is in itself something to be proud of. Have we not —

      “Our forests and our green retreats,

      At once the monarch’s and the muse’s seats,

      Our hills and dales, and woods and lawns and spires,

      And glittering towns and silver streams?”

      Yes, and go where you will anywhere round Twyford, every mile is sacred to the blood of warriors spilt in the brave days of old. Not far from here Pope the poet lived and sang. The author of “Sandford and Merton” was thrown from his horse and killed at our neighbouring village of Wargrave, the very name of which is suggestive of stirring times. Well, up yonder on the hillhead lived the good old Quaker Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Yet, strange to say, no Americans are ever known to visit the spot. There is at Ruscombe (Penn’s parish) a pretty and rustic-looking church, and not far off is the cosy vicarage of redbrick, almost hidden in foliage. On a knoll behind it, and in the copse at one side, is quite a forest of waving pines and larches and oaks. Hidden in the centre of this forest is a rude kind of clearing; in reality it has been a quarry or gravel-pit, but it is now charmingly embanked with greensward, with here and there great patches of gorse and bramble.

      This place all the livelong summer I made my everyday retreat, my woodland study. But it is not of myself I would speak. At one side of this clearing stands a great oak-tree. It rises from a flat grassy eminence, and affords an excellent shelter from showers or sun. At the foot of this tree sometimes, on moonlight midnights, a tall and aged figure, in a broad-brimmed hat, may be seen seated in meditation. It, or he, ever vanishes before any one is bold enough to approach. Can this be the ghost of Penn? Mind, I, myself, have never seen it or him, and the apparition may be all fancy, or moonshine and flickering shadow, but I give the story as I got it.

      Twyford the Great is not a large place, its population is barely a thousand; there is a new town and an old. The new town is like all mushroom villages within a hundred miles of the city – a mere tasteless conglomeration of bricks and mortar, with only two pretty houses in it.

      But old Twyford is quaint and pretty from end to end – from the lofty poplars that bound my orchard out

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