England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Now, dear, you must get out. This flagged walk leads to our front-door;
but our back rooms, which are the pleasantest, look on to the Close, and
the cathedral, and the lime-tree walk, and the deanery, and the rookery."
It was a mere slip of a house; the kitchen being wisely placed close to
the front-door, and so reserving the pretty view for the little dining-
room, out of which a glass-door opened into a small walled-in garden,
which had again an entrance into the Close. Upstairs was a bedroom to
the front, which Miss Monro had taken for herself, because as she said,
she had old associations with the back of every house in the High-street,
while Ellinor mounted to the pleasant chamber above the tiny drawing-room
both of which looked on to the vast and solemn cathedral, and the
peaceful dignified Close. East Chester Cathedral is Norman, with a low,
massive tower, a grand, majestic nave, and a choir full of stately
historic tombs. The whole city is so quiet and decorous a place, that
the perpetual daily chants and hymns of praise seemed to sound far and
wide over the roofs of the houses. Ellinor soon became a regular
attendant at all the morning and evening services. The sense of worship
calmed and soothed her aching weary heart, and to be punctual to the
cathedral hours she roused and exerted herself, when probably nothing
else would have been sufficient to this end.
By-and-by Miss Monro formed many acquaintances; she picked up, or was
picked up by, old friends, and the descendants of old friends. The grave
and kindly canons, whose children she taught, called upon her with their
wives, and talked over the former deans and chapters, of whom she had
both a personal and traditional knowledge, and as they walked away and
talked about her silent delicate-looking friend Miss Wilkins, and perhaps
planned some little present out of their fruitful garden or bounteous
stores, which should make Miss Monro's table a little more tempting to
one apparently so frail as Ellinor, for the household was always spoken
of as belonging to Miss Monro, the active and prominent person. By-and-
by, Ellinor herself won her way to their hearts, not by words or deeds,
but by her sweet looks and meek demeanour, as they marked her regular
attendance at cathedral service: and when they heard of her constant
visits to a certain parochial school, and of her being sometimes seen
carrying a little covered basin to the cottages of the poor, they began
to try and tempt her, with more urgent words, to accompany Miss Monro in
her frequent tea-drinkings at their houses. The old dean, that courteous
gentleman and good Christian, had early become great friends with
Ellinor. He would watch at the windows of his great vaulted library till
he saw her emerge from the garden into the Close, and then open the
deanery door, and join her, she softly adjusting the measure of her pace
to his. The time of his departure from East Chester became a great blank
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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