Can't get rid of
the notion whenever I see those little creatures walking about on the
hills.
At that time it was hardly raining at all, just a little mist, with the
sun coming into the summer-house every now and then, making us feel
very comfortable and contented.
"Now," said Jone, when he had got his pipe well started, "what I want
to talk about is the amount of reformation we expect to do while we're
sojourning in the kingdom of Great Britain."
"Reformation!" said I; "we didn't come here to reform anything."
"Well," said Jone, "if we're going to busy our minds with these
people's shortcomings and long-goings, and don't try to reform them,
we're just worrying ourselves and doing them no good, and I don't think
it will pay. Now, for instance, there's that rosy-cheeked Hannah. She's
satisfied with her way of speaking English, and Miss Pondar understands
it and is satisfied with it, and all the people around here are
satisfied with it. As for us, we know, when she comes and stands in the
doorway and dimples up her cheeks, and then makes those sounds that are
more like drops of molasses falling on a gong than anything else I know
of, we know that she is telling us in her own way that the next meal,
whatever it is, is ready, and we go to it."
"Yes," said I, "and as I do most of my talking with Miss Pondar, and as
we shall be here for such a short time anyway, it may be as well - "
"What I say about Hannah," said Jone, interrupting me as soon as I
began to speak about a short stay, "I have to say about everything else
in England that doesn't suit us. As long as Hannah doesn't try to make
us speak in her fashion I say let her alone. Of course, we shall find a
lot of things over here that we shall not approve of - we knew that
before we came - and when we find we can't stand their ways and manners
any longer we can pack up and go home, but so far as I'm concerned I'm
getting along very comfortable so far."
"Oh, so am I," I said to him, "and as to interfering with other
people's fashions, I don't want to do it. If I was to meet the most
paganish of heathens entering his temple with suitable humbleness I
wouldn't hurt his feelings on the subject of his religion, unless I was
a missionary and went about it systematic; but if that heathen turned
on me and jeered at me for attending our church at home, and told me I
ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang
him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy.
That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here
don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and sniff at theirs."
"Well," said Jone, "that is a good rule, but I don't know that it's
going to work altogether. You see, there are a good many people in this
country and only two of us, and it will be a lot harder for them to
keep from sniffing and snorting than for us to do it. So it's my
opinion that if we expect to get along in a good-humored and friendly
way, which is the only decent way of living, we've got to hold up our
end of the business a little higher than we expect other people to hold
up theirs."
I couldn't agree altogether with Jone about our trying to do better
than other people, but I said that as the British had been kind enough
to make their country free to us, we wouldn't look a gift horse in the
mouth unless it kicked. To which Jone said I sometimes got my figures
of speech hind part foremost, but he knew what I meant.
We've lived in our cottage two weeks, and every morning when I get up
and open our windows, which has little panes set in strips of lead, and
hinges on one side so that it works like a door, and look out over the
brook and the meadows and the thatched roofs, and see the peasant men
with their short jackets and woollen caps, and the lower part of their
trousers tied round with twine, if they don't happen to have leather
leggings, trudging to their work, my soul is filled with welling
emotions as I think that if Queen Elizabeth ever travelled along this
way she must have seen these great old trees and, perhaps, some of
these very houses; and as to the people, they must have been pretty
much the same, though differing a little in clothes, I dare say; but,
judging from Hannah, perhaps not very much in the kind of English they
spoke.
I declare that when Jone and me walk about through the village, and
over the fields, for there is a right of way - meaning a little
path - through most all of them, and when we go into the old church,
with its yew-trees, and its gravestones, and its marble effigies of two
of the old manor lords, both stretched flat on their backs, as large as
life, the gentleman with the end of his nose knocked off and with his
feet crossed to show he was a crusader, and the lady with her hands
clasped in front of her, as if she expected the generations who came to
gaze on her tomb to guess what she had inside of them, I feel like a
character in a novel.
