That high-pitched
roof, with the clumps of stonecrop on the walls near it, is Canon
Wilson's, whose four little girls I am to teach. Hark! the great
cathedral clock. How proud I used to be of its great boom when I was a
child! I thought all the other church clocks in the town sounded so
shrill and poor after that, which I considered mine especially. There
are rooks flying home to the elms in the Close. I wonder if they are the
same that used to be there when I was a girl. They say the rook is a
very long-lived bird, and I feel as if I could swear to the way they are
cawing. Ay, you may smile, Ellinor, but I understand now those lines of
Gray's you used to say so prettily--
"I feel the gales that from ye blow.
A momentary bliss bestow,
And breathe a second spring."
Now, dear, you must get out. This flagged walk leads to our front-door;
but our back rooms, which are the pleasantest, look on to the Close, and
the cathedral, and the lime-tree walk, and the deanery, and the rookery."
It was a mere slip of a house; the kitchen being wisely placed close to
the front-door, and so reserving the pretty view for the little dining-
room, out of which a glass-door opened into a small walled-in garden,
which had again an entrance into the Close. Upstairs was a bedroom to
the front, which Miss Monro had taken for herself, because as she said,
she had old associations with the back of every house in the High-street,
while Ellinor mounted to the pleasant chamber above the tiny drawing-room
both of which looked on to the vast and solemn cathedral, and the
peaceful dignified Close.
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