You will always find the
best eating-houses near the cathedrals; vergers' recitals are apt to
be long-winded, and visitors require speedy refreshment after a
complete round.
It was a popular village belief that bad luck follows if a woman was
the first to enter a house on Christmas morning, and Bell always made
a point of being the first over my threshold, shouting loudly his
greetings up the staircase.
Bell's wife survived him, living on in the same cottage in which he
was born and had passed his life. She was a hard-working woman, and
came over to my house once a week for some years to bake the bread,
made from my own wheat ground at the village mill. It was somewhat
dark in colour, owing to the most nutritious parts of the grain being
retained in the flour, but it was deliciously sweet and kept fresh for
the whole week. I only wish everyone could enjoy the same sort; the
modern bread is poor stuff by comparison, and its lack of nutritive
value is undoubtedly the cause of much of the poor physique of our
rural and urban population at the present time.
I had a very human dog, Viper, partly fox-terrier; though not very
"well bred," his manners were unexceptionable and his cleverness
extraordinary. One summer afternoon Mrs. Bell was greatly surprised by
Viper coming to her house much distressed and trying to tell her the
reason; he was not to be put off or comforted, and, seizing her
skirts, he dragged her to the door and outside.
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