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You must understand, gentlemen, that I was sent into the world, not to act, which I abominate, but to chronicle small beer and teach an army of little brats their letters; so this word 'wife, and that word 'chimney-corner, took possession of my mind, and a vision of darning stockings for a large party, all my own, filled my heart, and really I felt quite grateful to the little brute that was to give me all this, and he would have had such a wife as men never do have, still less deserve.
Over the peat-fire in the chimney-corner sat a very old man, his hands upon his knees, as he warmed his bare feet at the embers. He started up at the noise, and Hereward saw at once that it was old Surturbrand, and that he was blind. "Who is it? Is Hereward come?" asked he, with the dull, dreamy voice of age. "Not Hereward, father," said some one, "but a knight from Flanders."
"Now of this business, John," he said, after getting to the bottom of the second glass, and having a trifle or so to eat, and praising our chimney-corner; "taking you on the whole, you know, you are wonderfully good people; and instead of giving me up to the soldiers, as you might have done, you are doing your best to make me drunk." "Not at all, sir," I answered; "not at all, your worship.
As he sandpapered and oiled and polished, it was pleasant to glance in, now and then, at the open door, at a row of bright faces in the chimney-corner. Once in a while Celia joined them for a few minutes. She wanted to know about the purchaser of the spinet, but Morgan seemed inclined to evade her questions. He did not deny that there was a purchaser, but the name had apparently escaped him.
Dismiss her, by all means, at once!" "But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady," said the footman; "nor can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here." "What does she want?" asked Mrs. Eshton.
His observations are mean and trite, and very often false. His secret history is generally made up of coffeehouse scandals, or at best from reports at the third, fourth, or fifth hand. The account of the Pretender's birth, would only become an old woman in a chimney-corner.
The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cup with the singer so heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass voice as before: "And on his soul may God ha' mercy!" All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway. Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests particularly regarded him.
For Mrs Darvell was gifted with a range of expression and a freedom of speech which had been denied to her "man," and he had learned to dread the times when the missus was put out, as occasions when he stood defenceless before that deadly weapon the tongue. He was dreading it now, although he sat so quietly smoking in the chimney-corner.
He paused for a minute or two, looking earnestly at the crouching old man in the chimney-corner. 'Grandfather's quite simple, he said, 'and he's dark, too, and doesn't know what any one is saying. But I know thee'lt be good to him, Stephen. Hearken, children: your poor old grandfather was once in jail, and was sent across the seas, for a thief.
Here, without a moment's warning, and in the midst of a general conversation between her father, sister, and the young man before alluded to, who devotedly wooed her in ignorance of her infatuation, she would start from her seat in the chimney-corner as if she had received a galvanic shock, and spring convulsively towards the ceiling; then she would burst into tears, and it was not till some half-hour had passed that she grew calm as usual.
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