Cousin Phillis | Page 5

it might be the same, or it might be that I had to
accompany Mr Holdsworth, the managing engineer, to some point on
the line between Eltham and Hornby. This I always enjoyed, because of
the variety, and because of the country we traversed (which was very
wild and pretty), and because I was thrown into companionship with
Mr Holdsworth, who held the position of hero in my boyish mind. He
was a young man of five-and-twenty or so, and was in a station above
mine, both by birth and education; and he had travelled on the
Continent, and wore mustachios and whiskers of a somewhat foreign
fashion. I was proud of being seen with him. He was really a fine

fellow in a good number of ways, and I might have fallen into much
worse hands.
Every Saturday I wrote home, telling of my weekly doings--my father
had insisted upon this; but there was so little variety in my life that I
often found it hard work to fill a letter. On Sundays I went twice to
chapel, up a dark narrow entry, to hear droning hymns, and long
prayers, and a still longer sermon, preached to a small congregation, of
which I was, by nearly a score of years, the youngest member.
Occasionally, Mr Peters, the minister, would ask me home to tea after
the second service. I dreaded the honour, for I usually sate on the edge
of my chair all the evening, and answered solemn questions, put in a
deep bass voice, until household prayer-time came, at eight o'clock,
when Mrs Peters came in, smoothing down her apron, and the
maid-of-all-work followed, and first a sermon, and then a chapter was
read, and a long impromptu prayer followed, till some instinct told Mr
Peters that supper-time had come, and we rose from our knees with
hunger for our predominant feeling. Over supper the minister did
unbend a little into one or two ponderous jokes, as if to show me that
ministers were men, after all. And then at ten o'clock I went home, and
enjoyed my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room before
going to bed. Dinah and Hannah Dawson, so their names were put on
the board above the shop-door--I always called them Miss Dawson and
Miss Hannah--considered these visits of mine to Mr Peters as the
greatest honour a young man could have; and evidently thought that if
after such privileges, I did not work out my salvation, I was a sort of
modern Judas Iscariot. On the contrary, they shook their heads over my
intercourse with Mr Holdsworth. He had been so kind to me in many
ways, that when I cut into my ham, I hovered over the thought of
asking him to tea in my room, more especially as the annual fair was
being held in Eltham market-place, and the sight of the booths, the
merry-go-rounds, the wild-beast shows, and such country pomps, was
(as I thought at seventeen) very attractive. But when I ventured to
allude to my wish in even distant terms, Miss Hannah caught me up,
and spoke of the sinfulness of such sights, and something about
wallowing in the mire, and then vaulted into France, and spoke evil of
the nation, and all who had ever set foot therein, till, seeing that her

anger was concentrating itself into a point, and that that point was Mr
Holdsworth, I thought it would be better to finish my breakfast, and
make what haste I could out of the sound of her voice. I rather
wondered afterwards to hear her and Miss Dawson counting up their
weekly profits with glee, and saying that a pastry-cook's shop in the
corner of the market-place, in Eltham fair week, was no such bad thing.
However, I never ventured to ask Mr Holdsworth to my lodgings.
There is not much to tell about this first year of mine at Eltham. But
when I was nearly nineteen, and beginning to think of whiskers on my
own account, I came to know cousin Phillis, whose very existence had
been unknown to me till then. Mr Holdsworth and I had been out to
Heathbridge for a day, working hard. Heathbridge was near Hornby, for
our line of railway was above half finished. Of course, a day's outing
was a great thing to tell about in my weekly letters; and I fell to
describing the country--a fault I was not often guilty of. I told my father
of the bogs, all over wild myrtle and soft moss, and shaking ground
over which we had to carry our line; and how Mr Holdsworth and I had
gone for our mid-day meals--for we had to stay here for two days and a
night--to a pretty village hard by, Heathbridge proper; and how