Little has transpired
concerning the events of the back-journey, save that on passing the
house of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone bow's cast from the hamlet,
Father Westwood [1], with a good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, "I cannot
think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy they have taken
flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past." All
this while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was
darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all
ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing
such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood's senses, from the
time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life
in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which
is consistent with gentility, yet a star among the minor gentry,
receiving the bows of the tradespeople and courtesies of the alms-women
daily. Children venerate him not less for his external show of gentry
than they wonder at him for a gentle rising endorsation of the person,
not amounting to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as the hump of the
buffalo, and coronative of as mild qualities. 'T is a throne on which
patience seems to sit,--the proud perch of a self-respecting humility,
stooping with condescension. Thereupon the cares of life have sat, and
rid him easily.
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