Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/755

Rh "Yes, what is it?"

The landlord stooped again, to get a more comprehensive view of vacancy under the window-blind, and—with an asphyxiated appearance on him as one unaccustomed to definition—made no answer.

"I'll tell you what I suppose it to be," said the traveller.

"An abominably dirty thing."

"Mr. Mopes is dirty, it cannot be denied," said the landlord.

"Intolerably conceited."

"Mr. Mopes is vain of the life he leads, some do say," replied the landlord, as another concession.

"A slothful, unsavory, nasty reversal of the laws of human nature," said the traveller; "and for the sake of God's working world and its wholesomeness, both moral and physical, I would put the thing on the tread-mill (if I had my way) wherever I found it; whether on a pillar, or in a hole; whether on Tom Tiddler's ground, or the Pope of Rome's ground, or a Hindoo fakirs ground. or any other ground."

"I don't know about putting Mr Mopes on the tread-mill," said the landlord, shaking his head very seriously. "There ain't a doubt but what he has got landed property."

"How far may it be to this said Tom Tiddler's Ground?" asked the traveller.

"Put it at five mile," returned the landlord.

"Well! When I have done my breakfast," said the traveller, "I'll go there. I came over here this morning to find it out and see it."

"Many does," observed the landlord.

The conversation passed, in the midsummer weather of no remote year of grace, down among the pleasant dales and trout-streams of a green English county. No matter what county. Enough that you may hunt there, shoot there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown Roman roads there, open ancient barrows there, see many a square mile of richly cultivated land there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold peasantry, their country's pride, who will tell you (if you want to know) how pastoral housekeeping is done on nine shillings a week.

Mr. Traveller sat at his breakfast in the little sanded parlor of the Peal of Bells village ale-house, with the dew and dust of an early walk upon his shoes—an early walk by road