Nott

“ Nott's unprofitable tenants—the rats? No. A bright idea flashed upon Mr. Nott's troubled mind. It was De Ferrières snoring! He smiled grimly. "Wonder if Rosey'd call him a gentleman if she heard that," he chuckled to himself as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the small state-room opposite to his daughter's. During the rest of the night he dreamed of being compelled to give Rosey in marriage to his lodger, who added insult to the outrage by snoring audibly through the marriage service. ”

“ Nott was a Far Western farmer who had never seen a ship before, nor a larger stream of water than a tributary of the Missouri River. In a spirit, half of fascination, half of speculation, he had bought her at the time of her abandonment, and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma with his live stock, to defray the expenses of filling in the land where she stood, and the improvements of the vicinity. He had transferred his household goods and his only daughter to her cabin, and had divided the space "between decks" and her hold into lodging-rooms, and lofts for the storage of goods. ”

“ At the moment it seemed impossible that any human intelligence could have suspected deceit or duplicity in Rosey's clear gaze. But Mr. Nott's intelligence was superhuman. "I was sayin' that Mr. Ferrieres didn't happen in while the young feller was there—eh?"
"No, father," answered Rosey, with an effort to follow him out of the pages of her book. "Why?"
But Mr. Nott did not reply. Later in the evening he awkwardly waylaid the new lodger before the cabin door as that gentleman would have passed on to his room. ”

“ De Ferrieres staggered to his feet despite Nott's restraining hand. "To leave Mademoiselle and leave the ship?" he said huskily, "is it not?"
"In course. Yer can leave things yer just ez you found 'em when you came, you know," continued Nott, for the first time looking around the miserable apartment. "It's a business job. I'll take the bales back ag'in, and you kin reckon up what you're out, countin' Rosey and loss o' time." ”

“ What could be done with a man whose only idea of action at such a moment was to nail up an undisturbed entrance in his invaded house! He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that when Nott rejoined him in the cabin he scarcely heeded his presence, and was entirely oblivious of the furtive looks which the old man from time to time cast upon his face.
"I reckon ye wouldn't mind," broke in Nott, suddenly, "ef I asked a favor of ye, Mr. Renshaw. Mebbee ye'll allow it's askin' too much in the matter of expense; mebbee ye'll allow it's askin' too much in the matter o' time. ”

“ But the passing glow had faded from her young cheeks and her eyes wandered again to her book. "He pays his rent regularly every steamer night," she said, quietly, as if dismissing an exhausted subject, "and he'll be here in a moment, I dare say." She took up her book, and leaning her head on her hand, once more became absorbed in its pages.
An uneasy silence followed. The rain beat against the windows, the ticking of a clock became audible, but still Mr. Nott sat with vacant eyes fixed on his daughter's face, and the constrained smile on his lips. ”

“ In June 1843 Nott married a second time. In October he had a recurrence of an illness which he had contracted in Afghanistan, and in the following year he was obliged to proceed on leave to the Cape of Good Hope. After a few weeks at the Cape he became so much worse that he was sent to England, where he arrived in the summer of 1844. He received numerous invitations, but he was too ill even to go to Windsor, and he lived in retirement at Carmarthen. The court of directors of the East India Company on 21 Aug. passed a resolution granting an annuity of 1,000l. for life to Nott. ”

“ She had nearly reached it when her eye fell on the pallet which it partly illuminated. A singular resemblance in the ragged heap made her draw closer. The faded quilt was a dressing-gown, and clutching its folds lay a white, wasted hand.
The emigrant childhood of Rose Nott had been more than once shadowed by scalping-knives, and she was acquainted with Death. She went fearlessly to the couch, and found that the dressing-gown was only an enwrapping of the emaciated and lifeless body of De Ferrières. She did not retreat or call for help, but examined him closely. ”

“ Nott, with beaming unconsciousness, "she had n't any trunks. I reckon she had n't even an extra gown hanging up in the wagin, 'cept the petticoat ez she had wrapped around yer. It was about ez much ez we could do to skirmish round with Injins, alkali, and cold, and we sorter forgot to dress for dinner. She never thought, Rosey, that you and me would live to be inhabitin' a paliss of a real ship. Ef she had she would have died a proud woman." ”

“ You don't seem to suit the climate, you see, and your general gait is likely to stampede the other cattle. Agin," said Nott, with an ostentation of looking at his companion but really gazing on vacancy, "this fixed-up, antique style of yours goes better with them ivy-kivered ruins in Rome and Palmyry that Rosey's mixed you up with, than it would yere. I ain't sayin'," he added as De Ferrières was about to speak, "I ain't sayin' ez that child ain't smitten with ye. It ain't no use to lie and say she don't prefer you to her old father, or young chaps of her own age and kind. ”

“ Nott, musingly; "it's no slouch of an advertisement. 'The Pontiac,' the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St. Jo, Missouri. Send it on to your aunt Phoebe; sorter make the old folks open their eyes—oh? Well, seem' he's been to some expense fittin' up an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide. But as to that d——d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation."
"How can you say that, father!" said Rosey, with a slight increase of color. "It was your own offer. ”

“ Even in the man's insane terror, his utter bewilderment at the question was evident. "Ferrers?" he gasped; "don't know him, I swear to God, boss."
"P'r'aps," said Nott, with infinite cunning, "yer don't know the man ez kem into the loft from the alley last night—p'r'aps yer didn't see an airy Frenchman with a dyed mustache, eh? I thought that would fetch ye!" he continued, as the man started at the evidence that his vision of last night was a living man. "P'r'aps you and him didn't break into this ship last night, jist to run off with my darter Rosey? P'r'aps yer don't know Rosey, eh? ”

“ How could she write to him if that knowledge was correct?
"Ef," said Nott, kindly, with a laying on of large benedictory and paternal hands, "ef ye're willin' to see Rosey agin, without speakin? to her, I reckon I ken fix it for yer. I'm goin' to take her down to the boat in half an hour. Ef yer should happen—mind, ef yer should happen to be down there, seein' some friends off and sorter promenadin' up and down the wharf like them high-toned chaps on Montgomery Street—ye might ketch her eye unconscious like. ”

“ Ah, well! Look, I am ready," interrupted De Ferrières, again springing to his feet, and throwing open his coat with both hands. "See! here at my heart—fire!"
"Ez I was sayin'," continued Nott, once more pressing the excited man down in his chair, "I might hev wiped ye out—and mebbee ye wouldn't hev keered—or you might hev wiped me out, and I mout hev said. 'Thank'ee,' but I reckon this ain't a case for what's comfable for you and me. It's what's good for Rosey. And the thing to kalkilate is, what's to be done." ”

“ There was much in him, though never yet called out, of the native force of his stern old grandfather who had begun life a wage labourer, and in his moments of revolt, as men who dissipate crave that which is cold or bitter or sour, Nort had moments of intense longing for something hard, knotty, difficult, for hunger, cold, privation. ”

“ Go and tell any twelve men in any town, go and tell any doctor in any town, that there is a man offered fifteen hundred pounds for a thing he could sell commonly for four hundred, and that when asked for a reason for not accepting it he pleads the inviolate sanctity of Notting Hill and calls it the Holy Mountain. ”

“ I rode the whole night, and saw only from a distance, and by moonlight, Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s birth-place and family seat, now much neglected.
Besides the Gothic church (of which nearly every English town possesses one, more or less beautiful,) there is not much to be seen in Nottingham; a remarkable manufactory of net excepted, where the steam-engines do all the work, and only a single man stands by the machinery to take care that nothing goes wrong. ”

“ It was the bird's beak that had made Notta laugh in the first place. It was long and blue, and curved so that it could fit over the comical creature's ear like a personal telephone connection.
"But why does it curl?" asked Notta, sitting down and staring at the bird intently.
"So I can hear myself snore," replied the bird. "As soon as I snore in my own ear I wake up and stop snoring." With its claw the Snorer adjusted its beak, much as one would adjust a pair of spectacles, and looked blandly at Notta. "I'm unusual—don't you think?"
"Unusual," whistled the Clown. "I'll say you are! ”

“ I had such an impression of him hustling and bustling around at Notting Hill, searching cellars until he found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells, exciting a whole neighborhood, calling up to second-story windows, stopping people in the streets, hotter and hotter on the trail of a wretched impostor of a chemist's pupil. After his efficiency at Notting Hill, we'd expect to hear that he went to the station, and—something like this:
"It is said that clinkers fell, in your street, at about ten minutes past four o'clock, afternoon of July fifth. ”

“ The county or sheriff prison for Notts and Derby was, as far as can be traced back by records, half-way up the over ninety feet cliff of the town of Nottingham, and was entered from the King's hall at the top. Light holes were made in the face of the rock to the south. In these vaults, now closed, men and women were confined like wild beasts, on straw. The prior and monks were enclosed here in the time of Henry VIII., and were marched thence to the gallows. ”

“ They got round her with soft words, representing that they were her friends and going to see that she got her rights."
"That doesn't explain why she's never communicated with me, though!" said Nottidge. "She might at least have dropped me a line!" ”

“ Three months."
"Any baby?"
"After three months!" blushed Mavis.
"Working so at 'Poulter's' makes one forget them things. No offence," apologised Miss Nippett.
"Good-bye. I'll look in again soon."
"If you 'ave any babies, see they're taught dancing at 'Poulter's.'"
Between Notting Hill and Wormwood Scrubbs lies a vast desert of human dwellings. Fringing Notting Hill they are inhabited by lower middle-class folk, but, by scarcely perceptible degrees, there is a declension of so-called respectability, till at last the frankly working-class district of Latimer Road is reached. ”

“ The difficulty of tracing this witness, from the slight clue afforded by Mr. Morton's statement, occasioned considerable delay.
SECTION III.
1.—Extracts from Mrs. Anderton's Journal.
Aug. 13, 1854.—Here we are, then, finally established at Notting Hill. Jane laughs at us for coming to town just as every one else is leaving it; but in my eyes, and I am sure in dear William's too, that is the pleasantest time for us. Poor Willie, he grows more and more sensitive to blame from any one, and has been sadly worried by this discussion about our Dresden trip. The new professor to-morrow. ”

“ She seemed fearful of letting the King out of her sight. When he journeyed to the North in August, she went withal, and came back with him to Nottingham in October. It was she that writ to my Lord of Hereford that he should not fail to be at the Colloquy (note 2) to be held in that town the fifteenth of October. With her was ever my Lord of March, that was as her shadow: my Lady of March, that might have required to have her share of him with some reason, being left lone with her childre in Ludlow Castle. It was the 13th of October that we came to Nottingham. ”

“ Clokes' breast. She talks of her son: "He is so ill and so young, he will die if kept a prisoner at the North, and he did not enlist till they threatened the drafting. Oh! why did we ever go to war, we were so prosperous and happy! Gentlemen, can't you do anything for my son?" And poor Mrs. Clokes' voice fails her, and she bursts into tears.
But, dinner done, we must resume our journey. It is nine miles now to Paris. We have seen no rebel pickets; but our friends, the contrabands, tell us, that they have gone along a little while ago, and it will be dangerous meeting in the dark. ”

“ Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature’s final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been under the ether. ”

“ But the men must sleep together, and by their horses; so her good natured offer is declined. Beside Mrs. Thornton, there sits a good natured little daughter, with light hair and blue eyes, and the pretty name of Nelly. Miss Nelly tells me that the war has cut them off from literature, which they took in form of the New York "Ledger." She brings out some of the old numbers, with Mr. Cobb's terrific stories and pictures of knights on horseback and ladies in swoons, all looking so familiar, that I almost expect to hear a newsboy run round the corner, shouting "Ledger! New York Ledger!" ”

“ His only, His for ever,
⁠Thou shalt be, and thou art! [6]
↑ These two lines are taken from the last London edition. In some editions they are thus given:
"And the perfect from the shattered,
⁠and the fallen from them that stand."
↑ "Leah and Rachel are allegorized in three different ways by mediæval poets. First, of the active and contemplative life; and thence also, by an easy transition, to the toil we endure on earth, and the eternal contemplation of God's glory in Heaven as here. So again, in a fine but rugged prose in the Nuremberg Mi for St. ”