| 235 | 236 | 237 | 238 | 239 |
| 1 | 236 | 472 | 708 | 944 |
|
game of spillikins in confusion. In legends it is said that Astaroth
travelled over the world, carrying on her back a wallet which contained
everything, even good women in their houses. A pell-mell of sheds thrown
from her devil's bag would give an idea of that irregular Weymouth--the
good women in the sheds included. The Music Hall remains as a specimen
of those buildings. A confusion of wooden dens, carved and eaten by
worms (which carve in another fashion)--shapeless, overhanging
buildings, some with pillars, leaning one against the other for support
against the sea wind, and leaving between them awkward spaces of narrow
and winding channels, lanes, and passages, often flooded by the
equinoctial tides; a heap of old grandmother houses, crowded round a
grandfather church--such was Weymouth; a sort of old Norman village
thrown up on the coast of England.
The traveller who entered the tavern, now replaced by the hotel, instead
of paying royally his twenty-five francs for a fried sole and a bottle
of wine, had to suffer the humiliation of eating a pennyworth of soup
made of fish--which soup, by-the-bye, was very good. Wretched fare!
The deserted child, carrying the foundling, passed through the first
street, then the second, then the third. He raised his eyes, seeking in
the higher stories and in the roofs a lighted window-pane; but all were
closed and dark. At intervals he knocked at the doors. No one answered.
Nothing makes the heart so like a stone as being warm between sheets.
The noise and the shaking had at length awakened the infant. He knew
this because he felt her suck his cheek. She did not cry, believing him
her mother.
237
Page
Quick Jump
|