Peter smiled. It would not be the thing for some one in a bookshop to
go and call on the parents of any one who could afford Crumpet and Miss
Jackson, but the thought of London, the very name of it, sent his blood
tingling to his face.
“Perhaps we shall meet,” he said. “I'm going to London soon.”
“Oh! are you? Oh! How nice! Then, of course, you will come to tea. Every
one comes to tea.”
Crumpet, tired of the rabbit, worn out with adventure and peril,
struggled into Peter's lap and slumbered with one ear lying back across
his eyes. The sun slipped down upon the town and touched the black
cathedral with flame, and turned the silver of the river into burning
gold. On the bend of the hill against the sky came a black gaunt figure.
“Miss Jackson!” Clare Elizabeth Rossiter leapt to her feet, clutched
Crumpet, held him upside down, and turned to go.
But for an instant she stayed, and Peter was rewarded with a very
wonderful smile.
“I am so glad you were here--she generally sleeps longer, but perhaps
it was New Testament to-day, and that's more exciting. It is a pity,
because there were such lots of things--I like you most awfully.”
She gave him a very dirty hand, and then her black stockings vanished
over the hill.
Peter turned, through a flaming sunset, towards his home ... the end of
the incident.
III
But he came home, on that Good Friday evening with an idea that that
afternoon on the hill had given him. It was an idea that came to
him from the little piece of superstition that he carried about with
him--every Cornishman carries it. Treliss was always a place of many
customs, and, although now these ceremonies drag themselves along with
all the mercenary self-consciousness that America and cheap trips from
Manchester have given to the place, at this stage of Peter's history
they were genuine and honest enough. To see from the top of the Grey
Hill, the rising of the sun on Easter morning was one of them--a charm
that brought the most infallible good luck until next Easter Day came
round again, and, good for you, if you could watch that sunrise with the
lad or lass of your choice, for to pass round the Giant's Finger as
the beams caught the stone made the success of your union beyond all
question. There was risk about it, for if mists veiled the light or if
clouds dimmed the rising then were your prospects but gloomy--but a fine
Easter morning had decided many a wedding in Treliss.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account