A majority are
perhaps intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found
in any village or hamlet; and when seen side by side - the lily
and the rose, not to say the peony - they offer a strange and
beautiful contrast.
This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any
pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several
children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it
seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent
expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded
by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six in
number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms - all
clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.
I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired
the distance.
"Branscomb - are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will
think of Branscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks
flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement.
What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and
what did it matter what any stranger thought of it?
"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless
words. "I was born there, and married there, and have always
lived at Branscombe with my people until my husband got work
in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in
this cottage."
And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that
Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That
she had been to other villages and towns - Axmouth, and Seaton,
and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to
Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe
- not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I had
never been there - had never even heard of it! People that
went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was
such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said
afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.
Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in
the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before
me. A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin
she might have been taken for a woman of Spain - the most
natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth.
But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with
a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her shame,
too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural;
for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more
clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has
entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would
have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the
English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
