PEARL-FISHING: Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words (Complete version)

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PEARL-FISHING: Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words (Complete version) Details

(includes biography) PEARL-FISHING Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words; (Complete version)fragment: I.LOADED DICE.Several years ago, I made a tour through some of the Southern Counties of England with a friend. We travelled in an open carriage, stopping for a few hours a day, or a week, as it might be, wherever there was anything to be seen; and we generally got through one stage before breakfast, because it gave our horses rest, and ourselves the chance of enjoying the brown bread, new milk, and fresh eggs of those country road-side inns, which are fast becoming subjects for archæological investigation.One evening my friend said, “To-morrow we will breakfast at T——. I want to inquire about a family named Lovell, who used to live there. I met the husband and wife, and two lovely children, one summer at Exmouth. We became very intimate, and I thought them particularly interesting people, but I have never seen them since.”The next morning’s sun shone as brightly as heart could desire, and after a delightful drive, we reached the outskirts of the town about nine o’clock.“Oh, what a pretty inn!” said I, as we approached a small white house, with a sign swinging in front of it, and a flower-garden on one side.“Stop, John,” cried my friend, “we shall get a much cleaner breakfast here than in the town, I dare say; and if there is anything to be seen there, we can walk to it;” so we alighted, and were shown into a neat little parlor, with white curtains, where an unexceptionable rural breakfast was soon placed before us.“Pray do you happen to know anything of a family called Lovell?” inquired my friend, whose name, by the way, was Markham. “Mr. Lovell was a clergyman.”“Yes, Ma’am,” answered the girl who attended us, apparently the landlord’s daughter, “Mr. Lovell is the vicar of our parish.”“Indeed! and does he live near here?”“Yes, Ma’am, he lives at the vicarage. It’s just down that lane opposite, about a quarter of a mile from here; or you can go across the fields, if you please, to where you see that tower; it’s close by there.”

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