The Argosy — page 115: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I02 The White Witch. where any sort of comfort was impossible. Theschool-room was just the place that suited him ; it was small, cosy and cheerful ; it had been | his den for years; and he could watch from its window what was going on in the Wildings’ farmyard. And now he must give it up, without any sort of acknowledgment, to a person he didn’t like; in fact to a person he disliked ; a prim, dull, cold, uninteresting girl who did her best to make him forget that she had even the merit of being young! Even her own mother, warm-hearted, affectionate as she was, did not seem to care very much about her. And who was to know when her visit would end ?” Godfrey began to feel that Miss Dixon weighed upon his spirits. ** She can’t even play!” thought he, as a final grievance. Though he grumbled at the playing of every girl he knew, and was always first in the common outcry against the piano as an instrument of torture, yet he was so fond of music that a woman who made no pretence to this ordinary accomplishment had hardly, he considered, a claim to any of the privileges of her sex. One of those privileges, his own society and conversation, he therefore considered himself entitled to withhold, as far as bare civility allowed—perhaps even farther—from Miss Dixon. On Miss Dixon’s part, as Godfrey took no pains to amuse or con- ciliate her, but rather returned her coldness with interest, she set him down as a dull, ill-tempered young man, who knew nothing of good manners and ought to be taught them. But the prejudice against her was not confined to Godfrey. The story of the fright her appearance had given to the school-children, with many distortions and exaggerations, had spread like wild-fire. The name they had given to the young lady in their terror clung to her, and raised a barrier against her in the ignorant and superstitious minds of the village people. This grew stronger when it became known that fever had broken out in a low-lying district of the parish on the very day of her arrival. The feeling was so strong that her assistance both in the Sunday-school and in the district- visiting had to be declined upon whatever excuses came first. Mr. Thornhill, remonstrate with his silly flock ashe would, could make no impression ; the villagers would not have the young lady at the Abbey —the White Witch—to visit their cottages or teach their children. Whether Miss Dixon guessed at the existence of this unreasonable dislike of her, it was impossible to tell. The occupations of active benevolence being denied to her, she gave herself up to such pleasures as belong to solitude. She read a good deal, delighting Mr. Mayne by the pleasure she took in the long-neglected volumes in his library, a sacred place which Godfrey had always taken pains to keep out of. She took long walks by herself, returning with her hands full of bits of moss, stones and twigs overgrown with lichen, flowering grasses, and a hundred other treasures of the woods and lanes. The girl had indeed sore need of such pleasures as did not depend Gomichbooks:.com