take their tales for what they are worth," said Lionel.
Grind gave a groan.
“People is credilous, sir, when they think they are going to better theirselves. Sir,” he added, with a yearning, pleading look, “could I have a bit of work again upon the old estate, just to keep us from starving? I shan’t hanker after much now: to live here upon the soil will be enough, after having been at that Salt Lake City. It’s a day’s wonder, and ’ud take a day to tell, the way we stole away from it, and how we at last got home.”
“You shall have work, Grind, as much as you can do,” quietly answered Lionel. “Work, and a home, and—I hope—plenty. If you will go there”—pointing to the tables—“with your wife and children, you will find something to eat and drink.”
Grind clasped his hands together in an attitude of thankfulness, the tears streaming down his face. They had walked from Liverpool.
“What about the ducks, Grind?” called out one of the Dawsons. “Did you get ’em in abundance?”
Grind turned his haggard face round.
“I never see a single duck the whole time I stopped there. If ducks was there, we didn’t see ’em.”
“And what about the white donkeys, Grind?” added Peckaby. “Be they in plenty?”
Grind was ignorant of the white donkey story, and took the question literally.
“I never see none,” he answered. “There’s nothing white there but the Great Salt Lake, which strikes the eyes with blindness.”
“Won’t I treat you to a basting!”
The emphatic remark, coming from Mrs. Duff, caused a divertissement, especially agreeable to Susan Peckaby. The unhappy Dan, by some unexplainable cause, had torn the sleeve of his new jacket to ribbons. He sheltered himself from wrath behind Chuff the blacksmith, and the company began to pour in a stream towards the tables.
The sun had sunk in the west when Verner’s Pride was left in quiet; the gratified feasters, Master Cheese included, having wended their way home. Lionel was with his wife at the window of her dressing-room, where he had formerly stood with Sibylla. The rosy hue of the sky played upon Lucy’s face. Lionel watched it as he stood with his arm round her. Lifting her eyes suddenly, she saw how grave he looked, as they were bent upon her.
“What are you thinking of, Lionel?”
“Of you, my darling. Standing with you here in our own home, feeling that you are mine at last; that nothing, save the hand of death can part us, I can scarcely yet believe in my great happiness.”
Lucy raised her hand, and drew his face down to hers. “I can,” she whispered. “It is very real.”
“Ay, yes! it is real,” he said, his tone one of almost painful intensity. “God be thanked! But we waited. Lucy, how we waited for it!”
THE END.
TOURS AND METTRAY.
My dear Mrs. B, my last letter announced my arrival at Tours. This will inform you of all I have seen and done since. After fixing myself in pretty, cheap lodgings, No. 5, Boulevard d’, close to the comfortable Hotel de l’Univers, which was too expensive for my slender purse. I went about sight-seeing, but not à l’Anglaise. I see no sense in making a toil of pleasure and doing one place after another with the indispensable Murray in one’s hand, as a duty to be got over like a schoolboy’s task, that one may play and enjoy oneself afterwards. If I leave some things unseen, I have a clear distinct recollection of the places I do visit, and have derived from them some fresh ideas. Tours is a pleasant bright-looking city, the modern parts full of handsome, well-built edifices, but I do not care for the wide streets and lofty houses. I like to wander in the quaint old streets so full of picturesque nooks and corners. I never wished to be an artist so much as since I came here. What sketches Prout would have made! Here is an old house, all full of cracks and lézardée, to use a French term. Its three projecting garret windows each with its own roof, not merely slanting from the roof of the house, as in old English houses, but resting on two side walls, the size of the window it shelters, give an air of imposing grandeur to it still; it is faced with slates so cut as to resemble the plating of a fish’s scales: a rough balcony decorates its first-floor windows, and a vine festoons the corner of the walls. Every window is full of flowers in Tours; they hang trailing from the open casement of old tumble-down patched buildings, and if you look up a narrow court you are sure to see it draped with the tender green of the vine, or adorned with blossoms of the most brilliant hue. No two houses resemble each other in form, though there is a general resemblance in style—how softly the light lies upon those projecting three-cornered bits of tiling or slating over door or window—what a full, dark shadow is thrown by that quaint old gabled house, projecting so far into the street, and how vividly the green of that vine and the hue of those nasturtiums trailing from the boxes in the open casement contrast with the sombre walls, and the dark little court beside it, and give life and colour to the whole. They are typical and characteristic of France and French people. Here there is nothing mesquin or vulgar about poverty. Labour is a god, and his votaries wreath themselves with flowers. They are not, as in England, ashamed of being honest workmen and workwomen; they do not ape ladies and gentlemen, or wear dirty flowers, tawdry faded dresses, and coats and trousers that have evidently had many possessors. I have seen but one dirty-looking girl, the only creature who has begged of me since I entered France. The men wear blue frocks or blouses, and trousers of the same strong kind of linen. Their shirts arc always clean and white, and though they often wear no stockings, and wooden sabots, in lieu of shoes, there is a general air of bien être and respectability about them sadly wanting to the poor in England. As to the women, how smart and pretty they look with their
