ine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."
In the next place, the building stood in a genuine cottage garden. It was
close to the road. The southern boundary was plain oak paling, made of
upright pieces which Hope had varnished so that the color was now a fine
amber; the rest of the boundary was a quick-set hedge, in the western
division of which stood an enormous oak-tree, hollow at the back. And the
garden was fair with humble flowers--pinks, sweet-williams, crimson
nasturtiums, double daisies, lilies, and tulips; but flower beds shared
the garden with friendly cabbages, potatoes, onions, carrots, and
asparagus.
To this humble but pleasant abode Hope conducted his daughter, and
insisted upon her lying down on the sofa in the sitting-room. Then he
ordered the woman who kept the house for him to prepare the spare
bedroom, which looked into the garden, and to cut some of the
sweet-smelling flowers. He himself had much to say to his daughter, and,
above all, to demand her explanation of the awkward circumstances that
had been just revealed. But she had received a great shock, and, like
most manly men, he had a great consideration for the weakness of women,
and his paternal heart said, "Let her have an hour or two of absolute
repose before I subject her to any trial whatever." So he opened the
window to give her air, enjoining her most strictly not to move, and even
to go to sleep if she could; and then he put on his shooting coat, with
large inside pocket, to go and buy her a little wine--a thing he never
touched himself--and what other humble delicacies the village afforded.
He walked briskly away from his door without the least idea that all his
movements were watched from a hiding-place upon his own premises, no
other than the great oak-tree, hollow and open at the back, in which
Leonard Monckton had bored two peep-holes, and was now ensconced there
watching him.
Hope had not gone many yards from his own door when he was confronted
by one of those ruffians who, by their way of putting it, are the
eternal butt of iniquitous people and iniquitous things, namely, honest
men, curse them! and the law, confound it! This was no other than that
Ben Burnley, who, being a miner, had stuck half-way between Devonshire
and Durham, and had been some months in Bartley's mine. He opened on
Hope in a loud voice, and dialect which we despair of conveying with
absolute accuracy.
"Mr. Hope, sir, they won't let me go down t'
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