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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 623
man !" And this Samaritan had jumped into his carriage, and was
gone, before Philip or Mrs. Philip could say a word of thanks.
Look at him as he is going off. See the green brougham drive
away, and turn westward, and mark it well. A shoe go after thee,
John Goodenough; we shall see thee no more in this story. You
are not in the secret, good reader : but I, who have been living
with certain people for many months past, and have a hearty liking
for some of them, grow very soft when the hour for shaking hands
comes, to think we are to meet no more. Go to ! when this tale
began, and for some months after, a pair of kind old eyes used to
read these pages, which are now closed in the sleep appointed for
all of us. And so page is turned after page, and behold Finis and
the volume's end.
So Philip and his young folks came down to Periwinkle Bay,
where we were staying, and the girls in the two families nursed the
baby, and the child and mother got health and comfort from the
fresh air, and Mr. Mugford—who believes himself to be the finest
sub-editor in the world : and I can tell you there is a great art in
sub-editing a paper—Mr. Mugford, I say, took Philip's scissors and
paste-pot, whilst the latter enjoyed his holiday. And J. J. Ridley,
R.A., came and joined us presently, and we had many sketching
parties, and my drawings of the various points about the bay, viz.,
Lobster Head, the Mollusc Rocks, &c. &c, are considered to be
very spirited, though my little boy (who certainly has not his
father's taste for art) mistook for the rock a really capital portrait
of Philip, in a grey hat and paletot, sprawling on the sand.
Some twelve miles inland from the bay is the little town of
Whipham Market, and Whipham skirts the park palings of that
castle where Lord Ringwood had lived, and where Philip's mother
was born and bred. There is a statue of the late lord in Whipham
market-place. Could he have had his will, the borough would have
continued to return two Members to Parliament, as in the good old
times before us. In that ancient and grass-grown little place,
where your footsteps echo as you pass through the street, where
you hear distinctly the creaking of the sign of the " Ringwood
Arms " hotel and posting-house, and the opposition creaking of the
" Ram Inn " over the way—where the half-pay captain, the curate,
and the medical man stand before the fly-blown window-blind of
the " Ringwood Institute " and survey the strangers—there is still
a respect felt for the memory of the great lord who dwelt behind
the oaks in yonder hall. He had his faults. His Lordship's life
was not that of an anchorite. The company his Lordship kept,
especially in his latter days, was not of that select description
which a nobleman of his Lordship's rank might command. But he