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Page 33
"Have a cup of coffee, Sophy. I'll go down for it. You are just as
trembly and excited as you can be."
"Very well; thank you, Charlotte. You always have such a bright, kind
face. I am afraid I do not deserve such a good sister."
"Yes, you do deserve all I can help or pleasure you in." And then, when
the coffee had been taken, and Sophia lay restless and wide-eyed upon
her bed, Charlotte proposed to read to her from any book she desired; an
offer involving no small degree of self-denial, for Sophia's books were
very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister. But she
lifted the nearest two, Barret's "Maga," and "The Veiled Prophet," and
rather dismally asked which it was to be?
"Neither of them, Charlotte. The 'Maga' makes me think, and I know you
detest poetry. I got a letter to-night from Agnes Bulteel, and it
appears to be about Professor Sedgwick. I was so annoyed at Harry I
could not feel any interest in it then; but, if you don't object, I
should like to hear you read it now."
"Object? No, indeed. I think a great deal of the old professor. What gay
times father and I have had on the Screes with him, and his hammer and
leather bags! And, as Agnes writes a large, round hand, and does not
fresco her letters, I can read about the professor easily."
RESPECTED MISS SANDAL,--I have such a thing to tell you
about Professor Sedgwick and our Joe; hoping that the squire or
Miss Charlotte may see him, and let him know that Joe meant no harm
at all. One hot forenoon lately, when we were through at home, an
old gentlemanly make of a fellow came into our fold, and said,
quite natural, that he wanted somebody to go with him on to the
fells. We all stopped, and took a good look at him before anybody
spoke; but at last father said, middling sharp-like,--he always
speaks that way, does father, when we're busy,--
"We've something else to do here than go raking over the fells on a
fine day like this with nobody knows who."
He gave father a lile, cheerful bit of a laugh, and said he didn't
want to hinder work; but he would give anybody that knew the fells
well a matter of five shillings to go with him, and carry his two
little bags. And father says to our Joe, "Away with thee! It's a
crown more than ever thou was worth at home." So the strange man
gave Joe two little leather bags to carry; and Joe thought he was
going to make his five shillings middling easy, for he never
expected he would find any thing on the fells to put into the bags.
But Joe was mistaken. The old gentleman, he said, went louping over
wet spots and great stones, and scraffling over crags and screes,
till you would have thought he was some kin to a Herdwick sheep.
Charlotte laughed heartily at this point. "It is just the way Sedgwick
goes on. He led father and me exactly such a chase one day last June."
"I dare say he did. I remember you looked like it. Go on."
After a while he began looking hard at all the stones and crags he
came to; and then he took to breaking lumps off them with a queer
little hammer he had with him, and stuffing the bits into the bags
that Joe was carrying. He fairly capped Joe then. He couldn't tell
what to make of such a customer. At last Joe asked him why ever he
came so far up the fell for little bits of stone, when he might get
so many down in the dales? He laughed, and went on knapping away
with his little hammer, and said he was a jolly-jist.
"Geologist she means, Charlotte."
"Of course; but Agnes spells it 'jolly-jist.'"
"Agnes ought to know better. She waited table frequently, and must have
heard the word pronounced. Go on, Charlotte."
He kept on at this feckless work till late in the afternoon, and by
that time he had filled both bags full with odd bits of stone. Joe
said he hadn't often had a harder darrack after sheep at
clipping-time than he had after that old man, carrying his leather
bags. But, however, they got back to our house, and mother gave the
stranger some bread and milk; and after he had taken it, and talked
with father about sheep-farming and such like, he paid Joe his five
shillings like a man, and told him he would give him another five
shillings if he would bring his bags full of stones down to
Ske�l-Hill by nine o'clock in the morning.
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