Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/35

Rh a horn handle. He wore apparently no ornaments, not even a watch. Those whom he met in the streets, or passed as they stood at their doors, looked hard and sharply at him ; but he neither evaded nor responded to their glances of interrogation. The barber who shaved him, extracted from him the facts that he had come last week from York city, where there was no news ; and that he meant to stay for some time in the village. After leaving him in possession of this valuable information, Mr. Tompkins sallied forth, and strayed, at the same leisurely pace, up a hill, the summit of which commanded a picturesque view of the village, and of the adjacent country. The barber observed something like a cicatrix, in a rather suspicious part of his neck, but he did not feel justified in pronouncing an opinion as to whether he had ever been actually hanged or not. In the mean time, or not long after, Mrs. Steele, Mrs. Hawkins, and Miss Cross, paid a visit to the widow, to tell her not to forget to come to a charitable sewing society that afternoon, and to make another effort to relieve their minds about the case of poor Mrs. Tompkins. They found the lady sitting with her hostess. She was knitting cotton stockings. She was a plain middle-aged woman, forty years old or upward, attired in a dark-coloured silk dress, with a cambric ruff and cap, not exactly like those worn by the strictest sects of Methodists and Quakers, but without any ornament. An introduction having been effected, the ingenuity of the three ladies was immediately exercised in framing interrogatories to the stranger. She was civil, amiable, and apparently devoid of art or mystery ; but never was there a more unsuccessful examination, conducted with so much ability on the part of the catechists, and so much seeming simplicity in the witness. Without resorting to downright impertinence, these ladies could extract no more from Mrs. Tompkins, than that she had come with her husband last from Liverpool, where they had left no family nor connexions, and that they meant to spend some time in the village. " Had she always lived in Liverpool ?" " No-she had travelled a great deal." " Was it her native place ?" " No- she was born at sea." " Had her husband been long settled in Liverpool. " " No-he had lived there some time," etc., etc. , etc. With this highly unsatisfactory result, the fair inquisitors were compelled to return from their mission. Something,