"It made me look like a
tramping sailor," she said. I did not tell her that this was precisely
the effect at which I aimed, though it was the case; but I coaxed her
into permitting it, and I abstained from passing a certain knowing
little ash stick through the knot, and hoisting the bundle over my left
shoulder, till I was well out of the grounds.
My efforts to spare her feelings on this point, however, proved vain.
She ran to the landing-window to watch me out of sight, and had a full
view of my figure as I swaggered with a business-like gait by Isaac's
side up the first long hill, having set my hat on the back of my head
with an affectation of profuse heat, my right hand in the bee-master's
coat-pocket for support, and my left holding the stick and bundle at an
angle as showy and sailor-like as I could assume.
"And they'll just meet the Ebenezer folk coming out of chapel, ma'am!"
said our housemaid over my mother's shoulder, by way of consolation.
Our journey was up-hill, for which I was quite prepared. The blue and
purple outline of the moors formed the horizon line visible from our
gardens, whose mistiness or clearness was prophetic of the coming
weather, and over which the wind was supposed to blow with uncommon
"healthfulness.
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