could have ridden single, but this would not have been thought
fitting on a journey with no escort of her own rank, and when she
mounted she was far too miserable to care for anything but hiding her
tearful face behind Mr. Dove's broad shoulders. Mrs. Dove was perched
behind a wiry, light-weighted old groom, whom she kept in great order,
much to his disgust.
After the first wretchedness, Aurelia's youthful spirits had begun to
revive, and the novel scenes to awaken interest. The Glastonbury thorn
was the first thing she really looked at. The Abbey was to her only an
old Gothic melancholy ruin, not worthy of a glance, but the breezy
air of the Cheddar Hills, the lovely cliffs, and the charm of the open
country, with its strange islands of hills dotted about, raised her
spirits, as she rode through the meadows where hay was being tossed, and
the scent came fragrant on the breeze. Mr. Dove would tell her over his
shoulder the names of places and their owners when they came to parks
bordering the road, and castles "bosomed high in the tufted trees." Or
he would regale her with legends of robberies and point to the frightful
gibbets, one so near to the road that she shut her eyes and crouched low
behind him to avoid seeing the terrible burthen. She had noted the
White Horse, and shuddered at the monument at Devizes commemorating the
judgment on the lying woman, and a night had been spent at Marlborough
that "Miss" might see a strolling company of actors perform in a barn;
but as the piece was the _Yorksire Tragedy_, the ghastly performance
overcame her so completely that Mrs. Dove had to take her away,
declaring that no inducement should ever take her to a theatre again.
Mr. Dove was too experienced a traveller not to choose well his quarters
for the night, and Aurelia slept in the guest chambers shining with
cleanliness and scented with lavender, Mrs. Dove always sharing her
room. "Miss" was treated with no small regard, as a lady of the good old
blood, and though the coachman and his wife talked freely with her,
they paid her all observance, never ate at the same table, and provided
assiduously for her comfort and pleasure. Once they halted a whole
day because even Mr. Dove was not proof against the allurements of
a bull-baiting, though he carefully explained that he only made a
concession to the grooms to prevent them from getting discontented,
and went himself to the spectacle to hinder them from getting drunk, in
wh
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