Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/146

 proud and gentle, talked about art, literature and history. When Rosy had delivered herself to her complete satisfaction on the subject of Lady Aurora, she became more quiet, asking, as yet, however, no questions about Hyacinth, whom she seemed to take very much for granted. He presently remarked that she must let him come very soon again, and he added, to explain this wish, 'You know you seem to me very curious people.'

Miss Muniment did not in the least repudiate the imputation. 'Oh yes, I daresay we seem very curious. I think we are generally thought so; especially me, being so miserable and yet so lively.' And she laughed till her bed creaked again.

'Perhaps it's lucky you are ill; perhaps if you had your health you would be all over the place,' Hyacinth suggested. And he went on, candidly, 'I can't make it out, your being so up in everything.'

'I don't see why you need make it out! But you would, perhaps, if you had known my father and mother.'

'Were they such a rare lot?'

'I think you would say so if you had ever been in the mines. Yes, in the mines, where the filthy coal is dug out. That's where my father came from—he was working in the pit when he was a child of ten. He never had a day's schooling in his life; but he climbed up out of his black hole into daylight and air, and he invented a machine, and he married my mother, who came out of Durham, and (by her people) out of the pits and misery too. My father had no great figure, but she was magnificent—the finest woman in the country, and the bravest, and the best. She's in her grave now, and I couldn't go to look at it even if it