The mention of this book reminds me of
another and far racier picture of our island life. The latter
parts of Rocambole are surely too sparingly consulted in the
country which they celebrate. No man's education can be said to be
complete, nor can he pronounce the world yet emptied of enjoyment,
till he has made the acquaintance of "the Reverend Patterson,
director of the Evangelical Society." To follow the evolutions of
that reverend gentleman, who goes through scenes in which even Mr.
Duffield would hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas.
But, alas! there was no Patterson about the Toll House. Only,
alongside of "From Palace to Hovel," a sixpenny "Ouida" figured.
So literature, you see, was not unrepresented.
The school-ma'am had friends to stay with her, other school-ma'ams
enjoying their holidays, quite a bevy of damsels. They seemed
never to go out, or not beyond the verandah, but sat close in the
little parlour, quietly talking or listening to the wind among the
trees. Sleep dwelt in the Toll House, like a fixture: summer
sleep, shallow, soft, and dreamless. A cuckoo-clock, a great
rarity in such a place, hooted at intervals about the echoing
house; and Mr. Jenning would open his eyes for a moment in the bar,
and turn the leaf of a newspaper, and the resting school-ma'ams in
the parlour would be recalled to the consciousness of their
inaction.
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