put in a deep bass voice, until household prayer-time
came, at eight o’clock, when Mrs Peters came
in, smoothing down her apron, and the maid-of-all-work
followed, and first a sermon, and then a chapter was
read, and a long impromptu prayer followed, till some
instinct told Mr Peters that supper-time had come,
and we rose from our knees with hunger for our predominant
feeling. Over supper the minister did unbend
a little into one or two ponderous jokes, as if to
show me that ministers were men, after all. And
then at ten o’clock I went home, and enjoyed
my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room
before going to bed. Dinah and Hannah Dawson,
so their names were put on the board above the shop-door—I
always called them Miss Dawson and Miss Hannah—considered
these visits of mine to Mr Peters as the greatest
honour a young man could have; and evidently thought
that if after such privileges, I did not work out my
salvation, I was a sort of modern Judas Iscariot.
On the contrary, they shook their heads over my intercourse
with Mr Holdsworth. He had been so kind to me
in many ways, that when I cut into my ham, I hovered
over the thought of asking him to tea in my room, more
especially as the annual fair was being held in Eltham
market-place, and the sight of the booths, the merry-go-rounds,
the wild-beast shows, and such country pomps, was (as
I thought at seventeen) very attractive. But
when I ventured to allude to my wish in even distant
terms, Miss Hannah caught me up, and spoke of the
sinfulness of such sights, and something about wallowing
in the mire, and then vaulted into France, and spoke
evil of the nation, and all who had ever set foot therein,
till, seeing that her anger was concentrating itself
into a point, and that that point was Mr Holdsworth,
I thought it would be better to finish my breakfast,
and make what haste I could out of the sound of her
voice. I rather wondered afterwards to hear her
and Miss Dawson counting up their weekly profits with
glee, and saying that a pastry-cook’s shop in
the corner of the market-place, in Eltham fair week,
was no such bad thing. However, I never ventured
to ask Mr Holdsworth to my lodgings.
There is not much to tell about this first year of
mine at Eltham. But when I was nearly nineteen,
and beginning to think of whiskers on my own account,
I came to know cousin Phillis, whose very existence
had been unknown to me till then. Mr Holdsworth
and I had been out to Heathbridge for a day, working
hard. Heathbridge was near Hornby, for our line
of railway was above half finished. Of course,
a day’s outing was a great thing to tell about
in my weekly letters; and I fell to describing the
country—a fault I was not often guilty of.
I told my father of the bogs, all over wild myrtle
and soft moss, and shaking ground over which we had
to carry our line; and how Mr Holdsworth and I had
gone for our mid-day meals—for we had to
stay here for two days and a night—to a
pretty village hard by, Heathbridge proper; and how