“Well done! You’re a capital one at that, any way. You would not think, Giulia, that I was once as active and lissome and slenderer than you! Yes—a good bit slenderer. But then I was smaller altogether. They used to call me the Sylph. I look like it, don’t I?”
And so chattering, she waddled across the wide stone floor of the hall to the door in the middle of the further wall, and led Giulia into the inner rooms of her habitation. From the hall they passed through a very small ante-room, very imperfectly lighted only by a borrowed light, in which there were two other doors, one fronting the great hall, leading into a sitting-room, and one on the left-hand, leading into a snug little room, once a store-room for linen, but fitted up as a kitchen for la Dossi’s special convenience.
“There’s my sitting-room,” she said, throwing open the door of it, and showing a tolerably well-furnished but rather bare-looking room, totally devoid of any sign of any sort of occupation or employment; but garnished with sundry prints of the ex-sylph, representing her in the various characters and costumes, which had made her fame and fortune in the days of her sylph-hood; among which, suspended on the wall in a place of honour, Giulia’s quick eye caught sight of the two contrasted belts hanging side by side, like the geographical representations of the shortest and longest rivers in the world; “and there,” she continued, pointing to a door at one side of the further wall, “is my bed-room; and there,” indicating a similar door on the other side of the same wall, “is yours. There we are, cheek by jowl, my dear. So you are in safe keeping, you see. Only the worst is,” and she winked at Giulia, who thereupon coloured up, though she could not have told why,—“the worst of it is, that I sleep like a stone two hours every day, from two to four, let alone all night, and should not hear if there were a dozen men in the great hall out there. But you are a good girl, and would not do anything wrong, I know. And this is the kitchen,” she continued, in a tone which seemed to indicate that she considered that to be by far the most important part of her habitation; “I generally eat here, unless I have anybody particular with me. It is very comfortable; and the things are hotter, you know. My hour is one o’clock every day, except Sundays. On Sunday I dine at three; so that the girl may always go to mass with me, and have time to make the soup afterwards. And then we have a mouthful of supper at eight. I do like a bit of supper. Ave Maria, gratiâ plena, Dominus tay-coo—oo-oo-m!” (The extra oo-oo showed that this was the weak point in La Signora Dossi’s conscience.) “And now come, and let us look after the dinner. I would not ask Don Civillo to come in and have a bit to-day, because I had no maid to help me. I suppose you don’t know much about cooking yet?”
Giulia rehearsed her small list of capabilities in this department, but la Dossi shook her head, saying, “Well, you will soon learn. Where there is a will there is a way. And it is a pleasure to teach a willing scholar. Now look here—”
So Giulia received there and then her first lesson in city cookery; and was thus installed into her new mode of life.
And then the mistress and the maid proceeded together to demolish the work of their own hands, amid the critical remarks and dissertations of the elder lady, who sat the while in a huge arm-chair provided specially ad hoc, while the younger, besides eating her own dinner, did the locomotive part of the business of the table.
And before the meal was over Giulia felt quite at home, and intimate with her mistress, and la Dossi had coaxed out of her the entire truth as to all her feelings and perplexities in the matter of cousin Beppo.
QUEER DOINGS AT ODDINGLEY.
Did the London reader, let loose for awhile from the din and smoke of the great city, ever pause, towards the close, say, of a summer day’s march, to gaze from the hill-top he had just reached at some picturesque little village lying below him? From the hearths of the houses scattered along “the street,” and glowing in the red light of the setting sun, rises the curling smoke which tells of the gathering of the household for the evening meal; birds are carolling in the wood hard by, and over its trees rises the tower of the old church, around which, under the yew trees where laughing urchins climb for berries, slumber the quiet dead, who lay down to die scarce knowing of a wider world than their own little one. How calm and peaceful it looks, after the uproar he has left behind! Here surely, if anywhere, men must dwell together in goodwill, free from the strifes and rancours of cities. And thus he moralises as long as his pipe lasts, and then, buckling on his knapsack again, descends the hill, and almost with regret passes through the little hamlet, and leaves it behind him. And yet, had he entered the inn, pointed out by its long trough, and its swinging, creaking signboard, promising wonders to travelling man and beast, he might perhaps have learnt from the gossip of the cronies over their ale, how deceitful was this calm; he might have heard how the squire was going to “take the law” of the parson at the next assizes; and how Farmer This was at war with Farmer That, the only discoverable reason being that one of them had, years ago, kept back his wheat longer than the other, and had had, after all, to sell it at a lower price; and how from the squabbles of a little village, “Lawyer” Grabham earned a respectable income; how, in a word, the same evil passions would break out here as elsewhere, and perhaps even more often, from lack of the outlets for men’s surplus energies which the life of towns affords.
Any chance stranger who happened to stumble on the little village of Oddingley in the summer of 1806, would certainly have been favourably impressed by it. There it lay, six miles from Worcester, out of the great roads, and shut in by its wood-clad hills from the turmoil of the world. But its whole population, of some hundred and seventy souls, was divided into two parties which