Wychford

“ Guy snapped.
"Well, I don't know," said Godbold, doubtfully. "Some of the most unnatural scandals I ever heard were made by deaf women. Though that doesn't mean I'm saying Miss Peasey is a talker."
"I'm sure she isn't," Guy agreed. "Good night, Mr. Godbold."
"Good night, Mr. Hazlewood. Don't you be discouraged by the gossip in Wychford. I always say, if you believe nothing you hear, next to nothing of what you read, and only half of what you see, no one can touch you. Good night once more, sir. And don't you fret over what people say. ”

“ December THE rain which began the day after the Greys' visit to Plashers Mead went on almost without a break for a whole week. December with what it could bring of deadness, gloom and moisture came drearily down on Wychford, and Pauline as she sat high in her window-seat lamented the interminable soak.
"I can't think why Guy hasn't been near the Rectory lately," she grumbled.
"I expect he's tired of us," said Margaret.
"You don't really think so," Pauline contradicted. "You're much much much too conceited to think so really." ”

“ The tangled garden, long and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush, over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along which the highroad climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on rounded hills. ”

“ Guy was for a while almost impatient even of his own room, for he felt it was lacking in any atmosphere except the false charm of novelty. He had been here three weeks now, he and deaf Miss Peasey; and were the two of them swept away to-morrow, Plashers Mead would adapt itself to newcomers. There was nothing wrong with the house: such breeding would survive any occupation it might be called upon to tolerate. On the other hand were chance to sweep the Greys from Wychford, so essentially did the Rectory seem their creation that already it was unimaginable to Guy apart from them. ”

“ A house rural now that the old semi-urban character of the great road to Oxford has, with the passing of the coaches and the post-chaises, long become merely a memory is the great “George and Dragon” inn at West Wycombe. West Wycombe once called itself a town, and perhaps does so still, but it cannot nowadays make that claim convincingly. If we call it a decayed coaching town, that is the most that can be conceded, in the urban way; for to-day its every circumstance is rustic. ”

“ Standing in the rough yard near the back door was an expensive looking car. The boys halted in the shelter of some large trees to consider, well out of sight of anyone in the house.
“Look at the upper back windows,” directed Rhodes. “They are above the level of the tree tops, and from them anyone could plainly catch a signal from Clanhammer Hall. What shall we do, now that we are here?”
“I don’t see that there is anything to do,” returned Don. “We can’t go up to the place, and we know that it isn’t deserted. Perhaps——”
Jim grabbed his arm. “Pipe down,” he whispered. “Someone is coming!” ”

“ Wyche was one of the many priests who had come under the influence of Wyclif’s teaching. Of his earlier years we know little or nothing. Hus, it is true, speaks of him as “the companion of Wyclif in the toils of the gospel,” but too much weight should not be attached to a chance phrase by one to whom Wyche was really a stranger. At one time it is possible he had been a monk, for we find in 1399 one of that name in charge of the alien priory of Derehurst, near Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. In the following year we find that Wyche was an ordained priest in the diocese of Hereford. ”

“ Well, I can tell you what Wyck can do. It can be—it is the first town in Gloucestershire, the first provincial town in England to start a National League of Liberty. They've got a League in London, the parent League; they may have another branch League anywhere any day, but I hope that—thanks to the very noble efforts of those ladies and gentlemen who have kindly consented to serve on my Committee—I hope that before long we shall have started Leagues in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester, Nailsworth and Stroud; in every town, village and hamlet in the county. ”

“ None of them was below Clanhammer Hall at the time.
“Somebody coming across the ice from the opposite side of the lake,” called Jim.
Rhodes spun in a half circle and stopped, screening himself behind some bushes that grew near the shore, the others following his example. They watched the man who was crossing.
“He is walking,” decided Terry, after they had watched him for a time.
“Yes, it isn’t one of the cadets,” said Vench. “He keeps looking up the lake and watching the boys. Wonder who it is?” ”

“ But to see so much of the country at once comes as a surprise to everyone. Stretching inland towards the backbone of England, there is spread out a huge tract of smiling country, covered with a most complex network of hedges, which gradually melt away into the indefinite blue edge of the world where the hills of Wensleydale rise from the plain. Looking across the little town of Guisborough, lying near the shelter of the hills, to the broad sweep of the North Sea, this piece of Yorkshire seems so small that one almost expects to see the Cheviots away in the north. ”

“ Thorleif stooped and unbound me, and I thanked him.
"Well, you won't go overboard now," he said, nodding toward the shore.
The great rock of Portland was broad off on our right, and maybe we were five miles from the nearest shore. Astern--for we were still heading out to sea--the smoke of burning Weymouth hung black against the blue sky. It was just such a day as yesterday, fair and warm, and the land I loved had never seemed so lovely.
"Let me go, chief," I said; "it is of no use for you to keep me." ”

“ Don was worried.
“I hope Jim and Terry aren’t anywhere exposed in this storm,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” Ned hastened to assure him. “Those fellows know the sign as well as we do, and they must have dug for shelter. The fellows are all right, and we’ll hit the trail as soon as we can.”
The Indian was looking at them earnestly, and the professor, who could speak Spanish quite well, took it upon himself to tell him the circumstances. The old man listened intently and then nodded.
“I am a sage,” he said proudly. “I tell you that you shall find them. Yengi is my name.” ”

“ The professor spoke up.
“We must lose no time in following them,” he declared, with spirit.
“The rest of us will follow them,” said Ned. “You had better go back to the ranch, dad.”
“Why should I go back?” demanded the professor.
“You must be tired. You had a long ride yesterday and didn’t sleep much last night. You and Yappi go back to the ranch and we’ll push on after Jim and Terry.”
140
“I’m going with you,” declared the professor, stoutly. “I’m no child! Don’t you think I have any interest in finding the boys and running this gang down? I would be mighty restless back on the ranch. ”

“ Rhodes went on to tell them a few things about the school and to praise their colonel.
“Colonel Morrell is a fine man,” he said. “We all look up to our headmaster. He isn’t here yet, but will be in a day or so. At present we are in the charge of his assistant, Major Tireson. The colonel is a little short, fat fellow, full of good humor and every inch a man. Have you seen the grounds yet?”
“We’ve been busy unpacking,” replied Jim. “But Terry saw some of them. He’s rooming over at Inslee.”
“I didn’t see much,” put in Terry. “I did see that old dormitory in the back, Clanhammer Hall. ”

“ To go to Wycliffe-on-Tees as its rector, to devote his life and his means to rebuilding and decorating the old church, and to spend his days with the rough and not very intellectual men of the Yorkshire borders, must have appeared to him in the light of a banishment, not to say a deliberate desertion of the path of duty which had opened up to him elsewhere. He wanted to live in the South, within easy reach of Oxford and London ”

“ Boys are very conservative, and in nothing more so than in their attachment to the familiar. They pestered and worried that most patient foreman till each room contained exactly the same furniture, no more and no less, that had, as Edmund put it, "lived together" in their aunt's house.
Then appeared a cloud on the horizon. Lady Alicia, who loved arranging things for people, had very kindly written to a friend of her own at Abingdon, and through her had engaged "a thoroughly capable woman" to "do for" Mr. Wycherly in Oxford. ”

“ But the bay is the reason for holiday Weymouth, not only for the beauty of its wide sweep and the remarkable colouring of the water, but for the firm sands with occasional patches of shingle that lie between shore and sea from the harbour mouth almost to Redcliff Point.
The chief excursion from Weymouth is to Portland, and of course every one must take it, but there are other and finer ways out of the town, most of which show the "island" at its best—as an imposing mass of rock in the middle distance. ”

“ Wycherly.
She went obediently and stood beside him.
"Have you ever thought," he said gravely, "that your walk in life may be precisely what you choose to make it?"
"No, sir," she said frankly, "I've always supposed I should be a servant—there doesn't seem anything else for me to be. You see, aunt knows she could get me into a good family."
"I don't think you're strong enough for a servant," Mr. Wycherly objected.
"Then," she said decidedly, "I think I'd better be a ward."
"A ward?" Mr. Wycherly repeated in puzzled tones.
"Your ward, like Master Edmund and Master Montagu. ”

“ They have been years of great development and of healthy growth,—not such development nor such growth as is often seen in this country,—nothing, indeed, [Pg 84] which in our age may be called remarkable, for almost any active and bustling railroad centre in the Western States can boast of greater census figures; but the growth of Weymouth has been that of a thrifty, industrious New England town, and when, after the long lapse of ages, the final account is rendered, who shall say that the former growth will be found better than the latter? ”

“ Both names are now extinct at Weymouth, though I find in the Records of the town a Jeffery in 1651 (see p. 70) , and also a mention of one John Jeffers (Aug. 18, 1777) , as a soldier who enlisted in Arnold’s Canada campaign during the Revolution. Both were made freemen at early dates:—Burslem was a deputy from the town in 1636, and it was to Jeffries that Morton wrote as to his “good gossip,” in 1634. It was to him and to Blackstone that John Gorges wrote in 1629, in regard to putting Oldham in possession of the Gorges grant. Young’s Chron. of Mass. ”

“ Mr. Wycherly sat, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands: "Boys, boys, it is appalling that at the very outset we should have scandalised a neighbour and made ourselves a nuisance."
"Not a nuisance, Guardie," Edmund remonstrated; "she must have liked to watch us or she wouldn't have done it. If Mrs. Thingummy had kept behind her own curtains she couldn't have seen us so plain."
Here Mrs. Griffin tapped at the door again, opened it about three inches, and called through: "A lady to see you, sir."
"That'll be your one come to complain," Edmund whispered to his distracted guardian. ”

“ Eastward the green islands studded the bay, round which the sea sparkled with waters rarely vexed by the keel and never beaten by the paddle,—to the north the town of Boston was hidden from sight as it nestled at the feet of its hills,—to the west the Blue Hills loomed up in their soft, misty beauty even as they do to-day, they alone unchanged,—to the south stretched away the more level forest land in which the beautiful Weymouth ponds lay quietly imbedded in their native framework of virgin green, while around their shores the wolf still lurked and the swift deer bounded. ”

“ If it was not the Duke who was at Ashford, it was I!"
"And who are you?" she retorted, with a look that withered me. "Who will care whether you met Sir John at Ashford or not? King William--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion this side, call him I say what you will--at least he flies at high game, and does not hawk at mice!"
"Mice?"
"Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked all over the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now? ”

“ High Wycombe, as if the name was ironical, lies along the bottom of a narrow and deep valley, the hills on each side being very steep indeed. The valley runs somewhere about from east to west, and the wheat on the hills facing the south will, if this weather continue, be fit to reap in ten days. I saw one field of oats that a bold farmer would cut next Monday. Wycombe is a very fine and very clean market town; the people all looking extremely well; the girls somewhat larger featured and larger boned than those in Sussex, and not so fresh-coloured and bright-eyed. ”

“ Vench drove to Portville and the colonel engaged a room at the main hotel. The boys followed him to his room and they had a final council of war.
“I want you boys to return and go on with things just as if nothing had happened,” directed the colonel. “Of course, the major may find out that the game has been spoiled, and then he’ll try to escape. If possible, keep your eyes on him. Watch Clanhammer Hall, too. We mustn’t allow anything to happen to Don.”
“What shall I do with that driver in the tool house?” asked Vench. ”