I have sometimes wondered whether its
vogue would have been as great had the whisky been eliminated from
its composition. In her home under the Sussex downs, amidst the
broad stretches of heather-clad common, the beautiful Tudor stone-
built old farm-houses, and the undulating woodlands of that most
lovable and typically English county, she continued, to the end of
her life, visiting amongst her less fortunate neighbours, and
finding friends in every house. Her immense vitality and power of
entering into the sorrows and enjoyments of others, led at times
to developments very unexpected in the case of one so aged. For
instance, a small great-nephew of mine had had a pair of stilts
given him. The boy was clumsy at learning to use them, and my
mother, who in her youth, could perform every species of trick
upon stilts, was discovered by her trained nurse mounted on stilts
and perambulating the garden on them, in her eighty-sixth year,
for the better instruction of her little great-grandson. Again,
during a great rat-hunt we had organised, the nurse missed her
ninety-year-old charge, to discover her later, in company with the
stable-boy, behind a barn, both of them armed with sticks,
intently watching a rat-hole into which the stable-boy had just
inserted a ferret.
Pages:
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440