" She
really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a
captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed
into his service.
"Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a
compassionate and tender smile, after we had talked a little;
"here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her
allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her
rum,--which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for to-morrow,
served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some
split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt,
and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot,
and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think!"
There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way
of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out;
and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest
manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm; and
something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond
Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Ropewalk, with
Old Barley growling in the beam,--that I would not have undone the
engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the
pocket-book I had never opened.
I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly
the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise
was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to
bore it through the ceiling to come at us.
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