instantly speaking kindly on seeing that her husband felt kindly, “and he must come to the Abbey for me to say it to him.”
And so they parted; but the Edinburgh notion, which of course Mr. Berry mentioned to his friends, was stereotyped in the Lipthwaite mind from that hour, and was duly set forth to all visitors—except Scottish ones. If it help the reader to comprehend somewhat of the features of our borough, the happy-hearted bride did not speak in vain. But we will fill up the outline a little.
Lipthwaite is in the leafy county of Surrey, and among all the pleasant little towns in pleasant England there is probably not one whose founders chose a better site. It stands in a valley bounded on the eastern side by a high ridge of well-defined hills of considerable height. Portions and strips of these are cultivated, and other sections of the hillsides wear a close clothing of firs, which crown the very top, while the larger parts, and especially the bolder and the terminating heights, are wild common, studded with green knolls, and garnished with the purple heather. To penetrate from the open breezy hill-top into the winding glades of the little forests, and to refresh the eyes in the quiet shade, and to listen to the sheep-bell and the mill-splash, and then to emerge into the full light, and look out upon the broad prospect of a highly-cultured country, spotted here and there with villages, to which the eye is guided by the little spire or tower, is no great achievement in the way of sight-seeing; but that unheroic ramble, if undertaken in the heroic spirit of patience and thankfulness, will not be unrewarded.
To return into Lipthwaite, in which it is desirable that a reader should feel himself at home, be it added that, although it possesses, as Lady Charrington has said, but two principal streets, lying nearly parallel, the one, old and irregular, and inhabited chiefly by the humbler class of our population (we were 4871 at the census of 1851), and the other built in more modern fashion, and containing some good shops, and many well-looking private houses, including our best and dearest hotel, the Barbel, those streets are connected, chiefly towards the two extremities, by several small and tortuous lanes, and these straggle out to various lengths from the town, some of them extending their broken lines of squalid white cottages nearly half a mile into the green fields, while others are brought up short, either by a stern red-brick house, which establishes itself as a sort of sentinel to prohibit further advance, or, more ignobly, by the darkening carcases of unfinished buildings, whose originators have had to be reminded by certain Commissioners of a text about building without counting the cost. The outskirts of Lipthwaite, indeed, on the castle end, are not the portion of the town on which our pride, before mentioned, chiefly perches itself. What we do pique ourselves upon is, first, our noble old church, to which the Reformers did very little harm, and the churchwardens have done very little more, and where there is a wooden font of unequalled ugliness, which we would not change for alabaster sculptured by Baron Marochetti. Secondly, we are proud of our Town Hall, which is hideous in point of architecture, and odious in point of accommodation, but in which King Charles II. was entertained to dinner, and made a joke which we loyally suppose that the mayor of the day was too frightened to recollect accurately, as it is so exceedingly stupid that we do not much care to repeat it. Thirdly, we are proud of a statue of Queen Anne, in white marble, to which some Hindoos, who were in the town in 1821, actually prostrated themselves, being suddenly struck by the extraordinary likeness of the work to one of their own frightful idols. And, lastly, we are proud of our prosperous literary institute, our very solvent gas works, our handsome workhouse, our increasing museum (to which a nobleman who cares nothing for zoology has generously given all his late father’s collection of stuffed animals,) our respectable Independent, Methodist, Baptist, and Unitarian chapels, and of our latest improvement of all, a drinking fountain, erected by our neighbour, Mr. Andover, who has done so many kind things for Lipthwaite (where there are a good many electors) that we form our own notions of his views for his eldest son, said to be a good speaker at the Union.
Now, to justify the answer about the distance from the railway station, and at the same time to let the reader see a little into the character of the excellent Mr. Berry (of whom more will be heard in the course of the story), suppose we let him state the case in a way to which he was rather partial.
“When my nephew, Horace Armstrong, who is in the War Office, was visiting me here, two years ago,” said the old gentleman, “I introduced him to most of my friends, and as he was a handsome, talkative, good-natured young fellow, who dressed very well, and made himself acceptable to the ladies, he enjoyed himself much, and left me alone a great deal, for which I was obliged to him. There were two families, in particular, by whom Mr. Horace was very much welcomed. These were next-door neighbours. Mr. Oliphant who succeeded to my business, has a series of daughters, all more or less pretty, and willing to be appreciated by a young gentleman; and Mrs. Penson, widow of the East India captain, has another series with the same qualifications. These girls are all fast friends till further notice, and Horace Armstrong, introduced among them, became an extraordinary favourite. In fact the silly things made a perfect pet and idol of him, and as he had not the least objection to be so treated by a cluster of pretty merry girls, his time passed very happily. He got his holiday extended, and when his country could do without him no longer, he contrived to persuade me to buy him a month’s railway ticket, and let him stay at Lipthwaite, and run up to town every morning. It was the summer, to be sure, and it is a good thing for girls to get up early and take walks, and they have a right to walk which way they like. So there could be no objection to the Misses Oliphant and the Misses Penson discovering that their pleasantest walk was one which always took my elegant nephew to an 8.45 train. They used to walk him round Spence’s Gardens, down Love Lane into the fields, across the millstream, and