Two Years Ago, Volume I

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Charles Kingsley. Two Years Ago, Volume I

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I. POETRY AND PROSE

CHAPTER II. STILL LIFE

CHAPTER III. ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE

CHAPTER IV. FLOTSOM, JETSOM, AND LAGEND

CHAPTER V. THE WAY TO WIN THEM

CHAPTER VI. AN OLD FOE WITH A NEW FACE

CHAPTER VII. LA CORDIFIAMMA

CHAPTER VIII. TAKING ROOT

CHAPTER IX "AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?"

CHAPTER X. THE RECOGNITION

CHAPTER XI. THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF AN OLD DEBT

CHAPTER XII. A PEER IN TROUBLE

CHAPTER XIII. L'HOMME INCOMPRIS

CHAPTER XIV. THE DOCTOR AT BAY

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Now, to tell my story—if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,—I must go back sixteen years,—to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway,—and set forth how, in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant houses side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. In one of these two houses, sixteen years ago, lived our friend Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land-agent, churchwarden, guardian of the poor, justice of the peace,—in a word, viceroy of Whitbury town, and far more potent therein than her gracious majesty Queen Victoria. In the other, lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor of medicine, and consulting physician of all the country round. These two men were as brothers; and had been as brothers for now twenty years, though no two men could be more different, save in the two common virtues which bound them to each other; and that was, that they both were honest and kind-hearted men. What Mark's character was, and is, I have already shown, and enough of it, I hope, to make my readers like the good old banker: as for Doctor Thurnall, a purer or gentler soul never entered a sick-room, with patient wisdom in his brain, and patient tenderness in his heart. Beloved and trusted by rich and poor, he had made to himself a practice large enough to enable him to settle two sons well in his own profession; the third and youngest was still in Whitbury. He was something of a geologist, too, and a botanist, and an antiquarian; and Mark Armsworth, who knew, and knows still, nothing of science, looked up to the Doctor as an inspired sage, quoted him, defended his opinion, right or wrong, and thrust him forward at public meetings, and in all places and seasons, much to the modest Doctor's discomfiture.

The good Doctor was sitting in his study on the morning on which my tale begins; having just finished his breakfast, and settled to his microscope in the bay-window opening on the lawn.

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"Pretty fellow you are, to go fooling your money away like that. What did that gimcrack cost, pray, sir?"

"That is no concern of yours, sir, or mine either; for I didn't pay for it."

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