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For at that moment the post came in, and one of his fags, humming a lively tune, came running with a letter to his door. "A letter for you, Kenrick," the boy said, throwing it carelessly on the table, and taking up his merry song as he left the room. But Kenrick's eyes were riveted on the letter: it was edged with the deepest black, and bore the Fuzby post-mark.
"He had a daily beauty in his life That made them ugly." And so, to pass briefly and lightly, over an unpleasant subject, Fuzby was brimming over with the concentrated meanness of petty malignant natures, united in the one sole object of snubbing and worrying the unhappy curate. To live among them was like living in a cloud of poisonous flies.
"Curate was he; a slashing trade that," was the brutal reply. "Curate of Fuzby? are you sure it isn't Fusty?" Kenrick looked at him with a strange glowing of the eyes, which, so far from disconcerting Mackworth, only made him chuckle at the success of his taunt. He determined to exercise the lancet of his tongue again, and let fresh blood if possible.
The conversation of the two boys turned chiefly on the holidays which were just over, and Power was asking Walter about his visit to Kenrick's house. "How did you enjoy the visit, Walter?" "Very much for some things. Mrs Kenrick is the sweetest lady you ever saw." "But Ken is always abusing Fuzby isn't that the name?"
Over the mere disadvantages of situation he might easily have triumphed, and he might have secured there, under different circumstances, a fair share of happiness, which lies in ourselves and not in the localities in which we live. But in making his calculation he had always assumed that it would be easy to get on with the inhabitants of Fuzby; and here lay his mistake.
The winning grace of her manners, the simple sweetness of her address, the pathetic beauty and sadness of her face, would have won for her, and had won for her, in any other place but Fuzby, the love and admiration which were her due. "She had a mind that envy could not but call fair."
In her lonely home, with no friend at Fuzby to whom she could turn for counsel or for consolation, shut up with the sorrows of her own lonely heart, she often mused at the slight sources, the little sins of others, from which her misery had sprung; she marvelled at the mystery that man should be to man "the sorest, surest ill." Truly, it is a strange thought!
He died of a broken heart, and all Fuzby built his conspicuous tomb, and shed crocodile tears over his pious memory. Truly, as some one has said, very black stains lie here and there athwart the white conventionalities of common life!
His abilities were of the most brilliant order, and if he had often been idle at Saint Winifred's, he had, on the other hand, often worked exceedingly hard during the holidays at Fuzby, where, unlike other boys, he had little or nothing else to amuse him.
"That is Fuzby," said Kenrick laconically, pointing to a straggling village from which a few lights were beginning to glimmer; "and I wish it were buried twenty thousand fathoms under the sea." Ungracious as the speech may seem, it cannot be wondered at. A single muddy road runs through Fuzby. Except along this road muddy and rutty in winter, dusty and rutty in summer no walk is to be had.
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