MY AUNT MARGARET ON THE ROAD.
OLD Tom Teukesbury, from the “Bull,” was not at the little wicket of Aunt Margaret’s habitation until sixteen minutes past nine.
As Tom drew up, driving a one-horse covered vehicle, the name and fashion of which have long passed away, my Aunt, fully equipped was standing on the step of her open door, with her watch in her right hand, the dial of which she presented grimly at Tom, perched in the distance on the box.
Tom’s lean, mulberry-coloured face, sharp nose, and cold gray eyes winced not at the taunt “It’s easy a showin’ a watch. I’d like to know where the ‘oss is to come from, if maister sends the grey to Huntley, and Jack can’t go in harness noways; and here’s the bay can’t go neither without a brushing boot; and I’m to go down to Hoxton to borrow one of Squire; there’s a raw there as big as my’ hand — you don’t want her to founder ‘twixt this and Muckleston, I’m sure; and you wouldn’t be so hard on the brute, to drive her without one — and that’s why, ma’am.”
Tom’s way with women when he was late, was to complicate the case, with an issue on farriery, which soon shuts them up.
So Winnifred got in with a basket of edibles, and the carpet-bag on the seat beside my Aunt, who entered the vehicle severely.
It was a journey of nearly forty miles, by cross-roads, to Winderbrooke. All geographers well know the range of bills that lie between Hoxton and that town. The landscape is charming — the air invigorating. But the pull up the steep road that scales the side of the hill, is severe. The bay-mare showed signs of her soft feeding. She was hirsute, clumsy, and sudorous. She had a paunch, and now and then a cavernous cough.
The progress was, therefore, slow; and the ladies, every here and there, up particulars stiff bits, were obliged to get out and walk, which, although my Aunt might not mind it much, distressed good Winnifred Dobbs, who was in no condition for executing an excelsior movement on foot.
Near the summit of the hill the ladies waxed hungry; so, it was presumed, did the mare. The party halted; the nosebag was applied; the basket was opened: Tom had a couple of clumsy sandwiches; the ladies partook; and the bay mare enjoyed her repast with that pleasant crisp crunching, which agreeably suggests good grinders and a good grist There was still a little pull before reaching the crown of the hill Winnifred could walk no more; but my Aunt trod nimbly up the ascent, and on reaching the summit, made a halt, and, like an invading general, viewed with an eye at once curious and commanding, the country that lay beneath.
She was looking for Winderbrooke close by the foot of the hill.
“Where’s the town?” demanded my Aunt.
“Wat toon, ma’am?” inquired Tom. “Winderbrooke, to be sure.”
“Well, Winderbrooke will be there.” Tom was pistoling Winderbrooke with his whip.
“Where?”
“You see the steeple there?”
“Ay.”
“Well, that isn’t it.”
“No?”
“Now, ye’ll see a bit of a rock or a hillock atop o’ that hill.”
“That hill — well?”
“Now, follow that line on past that whitish thing ye see.”
“You don’t mean on that remote plain? Why, man, that’s the horizon.”
“Well, it’s beyond that a little bit, over the rising ground that will be jest there; and folks say, on a clear day, you may see the smoke o’ the toon over it, though I never did.
There was a pause, and my Aunt looked stem and black toward the remote objects which he indicated and neither could see, and then she looked back over her shoulder in the direction of home. I can’t say what was passing in her mind; but she looked forward again, and with an angry side-glance at Tom, she said — Why, it’s a perfect journey!” There was another pause, and she said with a dry abruptness, “Let me in, please;” and in the same defiant tone, “Go on!”
And she drew up the window with a sharp clang in Tom’s face.
She sat stiff and silent, and sniffed as she looked sternly through the window, and answered Winnifred Dobbs, who was under the same comfortable delusion about the vicinity of Winderbrooke, sharply and suddenly, when she asked how far they still had to go, before reaching that resting place.
“Fifty miles, and another range of mountains.”