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Updated: June 28, 2025
It was the first time she had heard it since she left home, and to Elizabeth's tenacious nature home in absence had gained an additional charm, had grown to be the one place in the world about which her affections clung. In these dreary wilds of London, to hear a Stowbury tongue, to catch sight of a Stowbury person, or even one who might know Stowbury, made her heart leap up with a bound of joy.
It happened to be a notable day that sunshiny 28th of June when the little, round-cheeked damsel, who is a grandmother now, had the crown of three kingdoms first set upon her youthful head; and Stowbury, like every other town in the land, was a perfect bower of green arches, garlands, banners; white covered tables were spread in the open air down almost every street, where poor men dined, or poor women drank tea; and every body was out and abroad, looking at or sharing in the holiday' making, wild with merriment, and brimming over with passionate loyalty to the Maiden Queen.
They had not imagined she felt the leaving her native place so much. She had watched intently the last glimpse of Stowbury church tower, and now sat with reddened eyes, staring blankly out of the carriage window, "Silent as a stone." Once or twice a large slow tear gathered on each of her eyes, but it was shaken off angrily from the high check bones, and never settled into absolute crying.
Lyon came as usher to the Stowbury grammar-school, and happening to meet and take an interest in him, taught him and his Aunt Hilary Latin, Greek, and mathematics together, of evenings. I shall make no mysteries here. Human nature is human nature all the world over.
The months went by heavy and anxious months; for the school gradually dwindled away, and Ascott's letter now almost the only connection his aunts had with the outer world, for poverty necessarily diminished even their small Stowbury society became more and more unsatisfactory; and the want of information in them was not supplied by those other letters which had once kept Johanna's heart easy concerning the boy.
There have been people who have succumbed instantly and permanently to some mysterious attraction, higher than all reasoning; the same which made Hilary "take an interest" in Robert Lyon's face at church, and made him, he afterward confessed, the very first time he gave Ascott a lesson in the parlor at Stowbury, say to himself, "If I did marry, I think I should like such a wife as that brown-eyed bit lassie."
Anxious as she had been to go to London, and wise as the proceeding appeared, now that the die was cast and the cable cut, the old simple, peaceful life at Stowbury grew strangely dear.
Ascott to inter his wife here whether it was a natural wish to lay her, and some day lay beside her, in their native earth; or the less creditable desire of showing how rich he had become, and of joining his once humble name, even on a tombstone, with one of the oldest names in the annals of Stowbury nobody could find out. Probably nobody cared.
For the moment she had forgotten her errand; forgotten even Miss Hilary. It was not till Tom Cliffe asked her where she lived, that she suddenly recollected her mistress might not like, under present circumstances, that their abode or any thing concerning them should be known to a Stowbury person. It was a struggle.
I feel more like what I was in the old days, when I was a little chap at Stowbury. Poor old Stowbury! I often think of the place in a way that's perfectly ridiculous. Still, if any thing happened to me, I should like my aunts to know it, and that I didn't forget them." "But, Sir," asked Elizabeth earnestly, "do you never mean to go near your aunts again?"
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