CHAPTER IV

WHICH INTRODUCES A GREAT MAN

As I stood in our entry I heard with relief the voice of a visitor in our little drawing-room. I reckoned that since my mother had been occupied with company she would have had no time to notice my absence, and I should be spared difficult explanations. Rachel told me, however, that my mother had sent for me to come to the drawing-room, and that I would best make haste in appearing. Accordingly I ran to my room, threw aside my damp clothing, and hastily arrayed myself in my best, a blue gown with sash and stockings to match. While I was dressing, my thoughts ran on the wonder who the visitor could be; but my wonder grew as I entered the room where my mother and her friend awaited me.

As he rose from the armchair to greet me, he came scarcely to my shoulder, and his form was misshapen; but I lost sight of all that in the interest of his face which was illuminated by large dark eyes. The nose was long and the mouth marked by lines of suffering which appealed at once to my sympathy.

"This is my daughter Veronica, Mr. Pope," said my mother, and her visitor bowed with much ceremony, though the motion appeared to cause him so much effort that I longed to beg him to be seated and let me wait upon him. I stood for a moment staring like the rustic I was, and then burst out awkwardly: Are you the

great Mr. Pope?"

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The visitor smiled, and a smilé quite transfigured his face, though the muscles around his mouth stood out like whip cords.

"I do not look the great man, do I?" he answered. "You would scarcely look for a mind of any size in my little, tender, crazy carcass."

A shadow of bitterness fell over his face as he spoke, and I knew he was thinking how ill his frail body fitted his soul. I could think of no suitable response, but stood blushing and hesitating, till my mother, to cover the embarrassment of the moment, motioned me to a chair by her side and began to inquire after her friends, the Carylls of Sussex, the Fermors of Oxfordshire, and the Blounts of Mapledurham. They were all Mr. Pope's friends too, being Catholic gentry, and held the closer together by that bond in those days when to be a Catholic was to lie under a social shadow if not a legal ban.

It was through the Blounts, as my mother ex

plained to me later, that Mr. Pope had heard of our coming to London, and being no fair weather friend, he had made the more haste to visit us that he knew we were in straitened circumstances.

As I listened to the talk which passed between my mother and her visitor, I realized for the first time what the life of London meant to her, and how much she had missed it in the solitudes of Somerset. For myself, I felt a kind of loneliness as though they were moving in a world which I had neither the wit nor the training to

enter.

It was rather a relief to me when Mr. Franklin came in and I thought I should now have a companion in my awkwardness, but not at all. The newcomer appeared not a whit abashed by our company; but having bowed gravely to Mr. Pope, advanced to my mother and presented her with a nosegay, saying that John had told him this was her birthday. She took the flowers and accepted them with so much pleasure and gratitude that Mr. Franklin observed: "Madam, I can only wish that with your beauty you had bequeathed your graciousness to your daughter."

This speech quite bewildered my mother, who had heard nothing of the episode of the cake, and lest she should inquire further, I hastened to say flippantly enough: "I suppose, Mamma, that

Mr. Franklin has heard that it is the custom to hand the murderer a nosegay on his way to the gallows, and he is treating this occasion as a Tyburn festival.”

Mr. Franklin laughed. "I beg, Madam," he said to my mother, " that you will not allow your daughter to flout at my other offering," and with this he drew out a small purse from his capacious pocket and held it out to my mother; but she, unwilling to accept a gift of value, hesitated and drew back, whereupon Mr. Franklin turned and coolly tossed the purse into the open fire which burned on the hearth.

"O my purse, my purse!" cried my mother, whose fancy had been much taken by the pretty trifle. "How could you be so unkind, Mr. Franklin?"

At this our visitor smiled, and taking up the tongs, leisurely drew the article undamaged from the flames. “I am glad, Madam," he said, "that you have changed your mind, and happy to restore you the gift uninjured. Indeed I took no risk in throwing it in the flames, for 't is made of the asbestos, and I brought several of these purses from America, where they are reckoned a great curiosity, seeing that fire only purifies and cannot injure them."

"I perceive," broke in Mr. Pope:

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"The purse is by the fire purified,

But what can purify the stuff inside?"

Right using, I should say," answered Mr. Franklin, while we all drew around him to examine his new marvel when it had grown sufficiently cool to handle with safety.

After this Mr. Franklin fell at once into the conversation, and soon was busily discussing certain errors in the printing of Mr. Pope's "Iliad," for which the poet thanked him, declaring he would make a note of them for the new edition. Indeed, so interested was he in the discussion, that he readily accepted my mother's invitation to sit down at table with us, whereat I was somewhat abashed, for fare which had seemed good enough for an unknown printer was scarcely fit to offer to a poet of whom all England was talking. My mother, however, seemed to feel no misgivings, but, having set Mr. Franklin's flowers in a jar on the center of the table, placed her guests on her right and left hand, and at once. began to question Mr. Franklin about his colony.

"I fear," he answered, "that there is little of interest to tell, for we are but pioneers in the wilderness still. I often wonder why this little island, which, compared to America, is like a stepping stone in a brook with scarce enough of it above water to keep one's shoes dry, why, I say,