At intervals Giles climbed into the cart and entertained Lavinia with guileless talk, mainly relating to Hannah and her transcendent virtues. Nor did he stop at Hannah herself but passed on to her relatives, her mother who was dead and her grandmother who was ninety and "as hale an' hearty as you please." "A wonnerful old dame she be an' mighty handy with her needle, a'most as she used to be when she was a girl a-working at the tapestry fact'ry by the riverside. It were a thunderin' shame as ever the tapestry makin' was done away with at Mortlake an' taken to Windsor. It was the King's doin's that was. Not his Majesty King George, but King Charles--long afore my time, fifty years an' more agone. Lords an' ladies used to come to Mortlake then I'm told an' buy the wool picture stuff, all hand sewn, mind ye, to hang on the walls o' their great rooms. Some of it be at 'Ampton Palace this very day." Thus and much more Giles went on and Lavinia listened attentively. The cart rumbled through the narrow main street of Mortlake and reached Worple way where Giles and his mother lived in a cottage in the midst of a big plum orchard. The old woman was astonished to see a pretty girl seated in her son's cart but the matter was soon explained, and she insisted upon Lavinia having a meal before going on to Twickenham. Then Giles volunteered to show Lavinia the way to the ferry, the starting point of which on the Surrey side was near Petersham Meadows, and in due time she was landed at Twickenham. CHAPTER XII "ARE WORDS THE ONLY SIGNS OF LOVE?" Lavinia easily found her way to Pope's villa. The first man of whom she inquired knew the house well and guided her to it. The house was somewhat squat and what we should now call double fronted. The back looked on to a garden bordering the river, the front faced a road on the other side of which was a high wall with a wooded garden beyond. "That be Mr. Pope's house, young madam, an' that be his garden too, t'other side o' that wall. He be but a feeble shrivelled up whey-faced little gentleman, thin as a thread paper an' not much taller than you yourself. I'm told as he baint forty, but lor, he might be ninety by his looks. We folk in the village don't see much of him an' I doubt if he wants to see us." "Gracious! Why is that? What makes him so unsociable?" "He's always ailing, poor gentleman. Why, if ye went by his face he might have one foot in the grave. When he fust comed to live here he hated to have to cross the road to get to that there garden t'other side, so what do'e do but have a way dug under the road. It be a sort o' grotto, they say, with all kinds o' coloured stones and glasses stuck about an' must ha' cost a pile o' money. I s'pose rich folk must have their whims and vapours an' must gratify 'em too, or what be the good o' being rich, eh? Thank 'ee kindly young madam."