The Parsons Daughter of Oxney Colne | Page 5

she was sixteen, and had had
neither brother nor sister. She had no neighbours near her fit either
from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her life, excepting
always Miss La Smyrger. Miss Le Smyrger would have done anything
for her, including the whole management of her morals and of the
parsonage household, had Patience been content with such an
arrangement. But much as Patience had ever loved Miss Le Smyrger,
she was not content with this, and therefore she had been called on to
put forth a strong hand of her own. She had put forth this strong hand

early, and hence had come the character which I am attempting to
describe. But I must say on behalf of this girl, that it was not only over
others that she thus exercised dominion. In acquiring that power she
had also acquired the much greater power of exercising rule over
herself.
But why should her father have been ignored in these family
arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire,
and especially of Dartmoor, without that decision of character which
enabled Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection,
and probably enabled him also to see that his weekly bills did not pass
their proper limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly
deficient in these. As a parish pastor with but a small cure, he did his
duty with sufficient energy, to keep him, at any rate, from reproach. He
was kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing
with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and
indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him.
I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these
points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of
Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of
life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the Devonshire world;
it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble carpet-bag,
staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it was in that
character that he received now and again stray visitors in the single
spare bedroom--not friends asked to see him and his girl because of
their friendship--but men who knew something as to this buried stone,
or that old land-mark. In all these things his daughter let him have his
own way, assisting and encouraging him. That was his line of life, and
therefore she respected it. But in all other matters she chose to be
paramount at the parsonage.
Mr. Woolsworthy was a little man, who always wore, except on
Sundays, grey clothes--clothes of so light a grey that they would hardly
have been regarded as clerical in a district less remote. He had now
reached a goodly age, being full seventy years old; but still he was wiry
and active, and showed but few symptoms of decay. His head was bald,
and the few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But

there was a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light
grey eye, which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether
as an old man. As it was, he could walk from Oxney Colne to
Priestown, fifteen long Devonshire miles across the moor; and he who
could do that could hardly be regarded as too old for work.
But our present story will have more to do with his daughter than with
him. A pretty girl, I have said, was Patience Woolsworthy; and one, too,
in many ways remarkable. She had taken her outlook into life,
weighing the things which she had and those which she had not, in a
manner very unusual, and, as a rule, not always desirable for a young
lady. The things which she had not were very many. She had not
society; she had not a fortune; she had not any assurance of future
means of livelihood; she had not high hope of procuring for herself a
position in life by marriage; she had not that excitement and pleasure in
life which she read of in such books as found their way down to Oxney
Colne Parsonage. It would be easy to add to the list of the things which
she had not; and this list against herself she made out with the utmost
vigour. The things which she had, or those rather which she assured
herself of having, were much more easily counted. She had the birth
and education of