Cousin Phillis | Page 4

pastry-cook's shop in the county town of Eltham. My father had left
me that afternoon, after delivering himself of a few plain precepts,
strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new course of life on which
I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the engineer who had
undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham to Hornby. My

father had got me this situation, which was in a position rather above
his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the station in which he
was born and bred; for he was raising himself every year in men's
consideration and respect. He was a mechanic by trade, but he had
some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance, and had
devised several valuable improvements in railway machinery. He did
not do this for profit, though, as was reasonable, what came in the
natural course of things was acceptable; he worked out his ideas,
because, as he said, 'until he could put them into shape, they plagued
him by night and by day.' But this is enough about my dear father; it is
a good thing for a country where there are many like him. He was a
sturdy Independent by descent and conviction; and this it was, I believe,
which made him place me in the lodgings at the pastry-cook's. The
shop was kept by the two sisters of our minister at home; and this was
considered as a sort of safeguard to my morals, when I was turned
loose upon the temptations of the county town, with a salary of thirty
pounds a year.
My father had given up two precious days, and put on his Sunday
clothes, in order to bring me to Eltham, and accompany me first to the
office, to introduce me to my new master (who was under some
obligations to my father for a suggestion), and next to take me to call
on the Independent minister of the little congregation at Eltham. And
then he left me; and though sorry to part with him, I now began to taste
with relish the pleasure of being my own master. I unpacked the
hamper that my mother had provided me with, and smelt the pots of
preserve with all the delight of a possessor who might break into their
contents at any time he pleased. I handled and weighed in my fancy the
home-cured ham, which seemed to promise me interminable feasts; and,
above all, there was the fine savour of knowing that I might eat of these
dainties when I liked, at my sole will, not dependent on the pleasure of
any one else, however indulgent. I stowed my eatables away in the little
corner cupboard--that room was all corners, and everything was placed
in a corner, the fire-place, the window, the cupboard; I myself seemed
to be the only thing in the middle, and there was hardly room for me.
The table was made of a folding leaf under the window, and the
window looked out upon the market-place; so the studies for the

prosecution of which my father had brought himself to pay extra for a
sitting-room for me, ran a considerable chance of being diverted from
books to men and women. I was to have my meals with the two elderly
Miss Dawsons in the little parlour behind the three-cornered shop
downstairs; my breakfasts and dinners at least, for, as my hours in an
evening were likely to be uncertain, my tea or supper was to be an
independent meal.
Then, after this pride and satisfaction, came a sense of desolation. I had
never been from home before, and I was an only child; and though my
father's spoken maxim had been, 'Spare the rod, and spoil the child', yet,
unconsciously, his heart had yearned after me, and his ways towards
me were more tender than he knew, or would have approved of in
himself could he have known. My mother, who never professed
sternness, was far more severe than my father: perhaps my boyish
faults annoyed her more; for I remember, now that I have written the
above words, how she pleaded for me once in my riper years, when I
had really offended against my father's sense of right.
But I have nothing to do with that now. It is about cousin Phillis that I
am going to write, and as yet I am far enough from even saying who
cousin Phillis was.
For some months after I was settled in Eltham, the new employment in
which I was engaged--the new independence of my life--occupied all
my thoughts. I was at my desk by eight o'clock, home to dinner at one,
back at the office by two. The afternoon work was more uncertain than
the morning's;