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Updated: May 10, 2025
As we drove through the market place there was the usual group of idlers loitering on the steps of the Red Lion, who stared at us lazily as we passed. Milnthorpe was an odd, primitive little place the sunniest and sleepiest of country towns. It had a steep, straggling Highstreet, which ended in a wide, deserted-looking square, which rather reminded one of the Place in some Continental town.
It was still daylight, though the sun was setting fast; we had returned earlier than usual, for Allan had to go back to Milnthorpe, and he bade us goodnight hastily as I prepared to obey mother. Jack followed us, but mother called her back, and asked her to go to one of the cottages and fetch Carrie home.
He set me to work, I remember, on some interesting book of travels, that carried both of us far from Milnthorpe, and set us down in wonderful tropical regions, where we lost ourselves and our troubles in gorgeous descriptions. One evening I came up and found Allan reading the "Merchant of Venice," to her, and actually Carrie was enjoying it.
We had had an old-fashioned winter weeks of frost to delight the hearts of the young skaters of Milnthorpe; clear, cold bracing days, that made the young blood in our veins tingle with the sense of new life and buoyancy; long, dark winter evenings, when we sat round the clear, red fire, and the footsteps of the few passengers under our window rang with a sort of metallic sound on the frozen pavements.
Jumbles was a rare old philosopher a sort of four-footed Diogenes. He was discerning in his friendships, somewhat aggressive and splenetic to his equals; intolerant of cats, whom he hunted like vermin, and rather disdainfully condescending to the small dogs of Milnthorpe. Jumbles always accompanied Uncle Geoffrey in his rounds.
When I am working so hard to do a little good in Milnthorpe, why do you all try to hinder and drag me back?" "Because you are overdoing it, and wearing yourself out," I returned, determined to have my say; but she stopped me with quiet peremptoriness. "No more of that, Esther; I have heard it all from Allan. I am not afraid of wearing out; I hope to die in harness.
One side of the square was occupied by St. Barnabas, with its pretty shaded churchyard and old gray vicarage. On the opposite side was the handsome red brick house occupied by Mr. Lucas, the banker, and two or three other houses, more or less pretentious, inhabited by the gentry of Milnthorpe. Uncle Geoffrey lived at the lower end of the High street.
"Now, girls, you must just pack up your things, you, and the mother, and Dot; of course we must take Dot, and you must manage to shake yourselves down in the old house at Milnthorpe" that is how he put it; "it is not so big as Combe Manor, and I daresay we shall be rather a tight fit when Allan comes; but the more the merrier, eh, Jack?"
I quote this story as a text on which I wish to speak as to the advantage of gravelling heavy clay soils. Some weeks since I spent a few days at the village of Milnthorpe, in Westmoreland, and during one day with Mr.
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