Page:Heavens!.djvu/53

 already had heard him spoken of by this name at the Castle, where he was sometimes mentioned in conversation. There he was considered to be a mere commonplace village priest, who differed in nothing from his clerical brethren except in his love for secular books; man who had a little smattering of French, and who was generally nicknamed “Heavens.” Jenny even knew already why he was called so.

“He is in the habit,” Baron Mundy once explained the ladies at dinner, “whenever anything gives him particular pleasure or surprise, of exclaiming loudly, ‘Heavens!’ But if he is angry, he never says this.” And, making a comical face, the baron began to mimic Cvok—“Heavens! what good soup! Heavens! what a fish! Heavens! what sauce! Heavens! what a roast! what good beer! what good wine!”

Everybody laughed except the old baroness, who sat as stiff and looked as stern as Polyhymnia herself, and said with great dignity “Those commonplace people always have some sort of a saying on the tip of their tongue to hide the emptiness of their heads. They have no thoughts of their own, and so make use of any words and phrases they can find.”

Miss Jenny could not help thinking of all the empty phrases she heard every day spoken by aristocratic lips; but she kept her own counsel and said nothing.

At the doctor’s she heard much more about Heavens; and, indeed, the good priest soon appeared to her in a very different light and character from what the castle descriptions of him had led her to expect, so that a very lively interest and deep sympathy were awakened within her towards him.