190 EARLY REMINISCENCES to my father to release him by ordering him to mount into the rumble. Then we found that the poor people had loaded the carriage with presents, dried pears, prunes, nuts, grapes, cakes, whatever they could spare, and far more than we could possibly consume. There were tears in many eyes, and some rolling down my mother's cheeks as she wrung the hands of the good kind peasants. My father put a sum of money into the cure's hands to do with it what he liked. He wrote to my father afterwards to say that he had expended it on a set of handsome altar rails, table de communion, as the French call the rails, for it is at them, and not at the altar that Communion is made. I sat in the rumble with Pengelly, who was engaged for a quarter of an hour with his coloured handkerchief, which he usually kept in the crown of his hat, wiping off the kisses from his cheeks and chin, nose and brow. " You may wipe them off your face," said I, " but never off your heart." " Don't tell Susan," he said in a low tone ; a tone pleading, as if for his life. My mother wrote on October 28 to one of her sisters : " Our summer gipsy life gave so much occupation to the servants we took with us from Pau, that the baby generally fell to my lot, so that I had more of his company than, were it not for the novelty of the thing, I might bargain for ; and now that we are shaking down into our new abode, an exchange of chateaux by which we get one larger than before, we shall preserve the same size of party, making the baby's maid perform a housemaid's post. Next week I shall add another maid to the establishment; and then my time will be freer, and Edward and I shall begin on necessary visitings, which, you may well imagine, will be a source of enjoyment to me, who love so much new people, and those especially with whom I find such ease in conversing as with the French. That work done, a comparatively small one to what it was at Pau last winter, with our own country people, I shall retire into private life again, and wait to see if the French here are more inclined to fraternize with us than they were at Pau. Edward himself begins to talk very bravely about it, and proposes calling
