There were cottages, grouped and detached, all the way, with
gray stone walls and blue slate roofs, and in places the children
ran out from them with mercenary offerings of flowers and song,
or with frank pleas for charity direct. I yielded with reluctance
to the instruction of a Manchester economist in my carriage, and
denied them, when I would so much rather have abetted them in
their wicked attempts on our pockets. I remember ruefully still
that they had voices as sweet and eyes as dark as the children
who used to chase our wheels in Italy, and I have no doubt they
deserved quite as well of us as those did.
I got back my spirits when we left our carriages, and I found
myself walking up a pleasant avenue of wilding trees, with a
young Chautauquan from Australia who looked as if he might be a
young Chautauquan from Alabama, tall, and lean, and brown. We
fell into talk about the trees, and he said how they differed in
their green from the sombre gray of his native forests; and then
he, from that vast far continent of his, spoke of the little
island where we were, as Home.
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