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I lodged with an old basketmaker; he had a capital trade. Rivulet at the back of his house; reeds, osiers, plentiful. I see them now, as I saw them from my little casement while my leg was setting. And Lizzy used to write to me such dear letters; my baskets were all for her. We had baskets enough to have furnished a house with bask'ts; could have dined in baskets, sat in baskets, slept in baskets.
Lady Montfort noted with no unnatural surprise the purity of idiom and of accent with which this singular basketmaker was unconsciously displaying his perfect knowledge of a language which the best-educated English gentleman of that generation, nay, even of this, rarely speaks with accuracy and elegance. But her attention was diverted immediately from the teacher to the face of the sweet pupil.
On this the agreement was concluded, the basketmaker installed. Each week the carrier took his goods and brought back the payments; the profits amply sufficed for Waife's and Sophy's daily bread, with even more than the surplus set aside for the rent.
In its way this bit of intelligence meant as much to the basketmaker as, "Have you heard that young Fitz-Grubber has just got the double-first at Oxford?" or, "Do you know that old Cheshire has managed that appointment in India for his boy? splendid independence, isn't it?"
An idea prevailed that the basketmaker had spent much of his life in foreign countries, favoured partly by a sobriety of habits which is not altogether national, partly by something in his appearance, which, without being above his lowly calling, did not seem quite in keeping with it, outlandish in short, but principally by the fact that he had received since his arrival two letters with a foreign postmark.
I repeat, I can cure a defect which is not in the organ, but in the management!" "You can! you who and what are you?" "A basketmaker, sir; I hope for your custom." "Surely this is not the first time I have seen you?" "True, you once kindly suffered me to borrow a resting-place on your father's land. One good turn deserves another."
Some day, however, by and by, when you are inducted into your living, and have become a renowned preacher, and have plenty to spare, with an idea that you will feel more comfortable in your mind if you had done something royal for the basketmaker, I will ask you to help me to make up a sum, which I am trying by degrees to save, an enormous sum, almost as much as I paid away from my railway compensation: I owe it to the lady who lent it to release Sophy from an engagement which I certainly without any remorse of conscience made the child break."
In this little cottage lived an old basketmaker named Janiculo, with his only daughter Griselda, the child of his old age. He had also a son Laureo, who was a poor scholar in Padua, studying hard to get money enough to make himself a priest.
Numa Pimpilius did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the basketmaker. Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy; pretty story it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning how to preach a sermon from an old basketmaker!
With a few lessons I could soon recover the knack of the work. I should like to see the place again; it would be shaking hands with my youth once more. None who could possibly recognize me could be now living. Saw no one but the surgeon, the basketmaker, and his wife; all so old they must be long since gathered to their fathers. Perhaps no one carries on the basket trade now.
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