Aunt Deborah | Page 2

and went winding along the water meadows in a
thousand glittering meanders, until it was lost in the rich woodlands
which formed the back-ground of the picture. In the month of May,
when the orchard was full of its rosy and pearly blossoms, a forest of
lovely bloom, the meadows yellow with cowslips, and the clear
brimming river, bordered by the golden tufts of the water ranunculus,
and garlanded by the snowy flowers of the hawthorn and the wild
cherry, the thin wreath of smoke curling from the tall, old-fashioned
chimneys of the pretty irregular building, with its porch, and its
baywindows, and gable-ends full of light and shadow,--in that month of
beauty it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful or a more

English landscape.
On the other side of the narrow winding road, parted from Mrs.
Deborah's demesne by a long low bridge of many arches, stood a little
rustic mill, and its small low-browed cottage, with its own varied
back-ground of garden and fruit trees and thickly wooded meadows,
extending in long perspective, a smiling verdant valley of many miles.
Now Chalcott mill, reckoned by everybody else the prettiest point in
her prospect, was to Mrs. Deborah not merely an eye-sore, but a
heart-sore, not on its own account; cantankerous as she was, she had no
quarrel with the innocent buildings, but for the sake of its inhabitants.
Honest John Stokes, the miller, was her cousin-german. People did say
that some forty years before there had been question of a marriage
between the parlies; and really they both denied the thing with so much
vehemence and fury, that one should almost be tempted to believe there
was some truth in the report. Certain it is, that if they had been that
wretched thing a mismatched couple, and had gone on snarling together
all their lives, they could not have hated each other more zealously.
One shall not often meet with anything so perfect in its way as that
aversion. It was none of your silent hatreds that never come to words;
nor of your civil hatreds, that veil themselves under smooth phrases and
smiling looks. Their ill-will was frank, open, and above-board. They
could not afford to come to an absolute breach, because it would have
deprived them of the pleasure of quarrelling; and in spite of the
frequent complaints they were wont to make of their near
neighbourhood, I am convinced that they derived no small gratification
from the opportunities which it afforded them of saying disagreeable
things to each other.
And yet Mr. John Stokes was a well-meaning man, and Mrs. Deborah
Thornby was not an ill-meaning woman. But she was, as I have said
before, cross in the grain; and he--why he was one of those
plain-dealing personages who will speak their whole mind, and who
pique themselves upon that sort of sincerity which is comprised in
telling to another all the ill that they have ever heard, or thought, or
imagined concerning him, in repeating, as if it were a point of duty, all

the harm that one neighbour says of another, and in denouncing, as if it
were a sin, whatever the unlucky person whom they address may
happen to do, or to leave undone.
"I am none of your palavering chaps, to flummer over an old vixen for
the sake of her strong-box. I hate such falseness. I speak the truth and
care for no man," quoth John Stokes.
And accordingly John Stokes never saw Mrs. Deborah Thornby but he
saluted her, pretty much as his mastiff accosted her favourite cat;
erected his bristles, looked at her with savage bloodshot eyes, showed
his teeth, and vented a sound something between a snarl and a growl;
whilst she, (like the fourfooted tabby,) set up her back and spit at him
in return.
They met often, as I have said, for the enjoyment of quarrelling; and as
whatever he advised she was pretty sure not to do, it is probable that his
remonstrances in favour of her friendless relations served to confirm
her in the small tyranny which she exercised towards them.
Such being the state of feeling between these two jangling cousins, it
may be imagined with what indignation Mrs. Deborah found John
Stokes, upon the death of his wife, removing her widowed sister-in-law
from the cottage in which she had placed her, and bringing her home to
the mill, to officiate as his housekeeper, and take charge of a lovely
little girl, his only child. She vowed one of those vows of anger which I
fear are oftener kept than the vows of love, to strike both mother and
son out of her will, (by the way, she had a superstitious horror of that
disagreeable ceremony, and even the temptation of choosing