368 CALEB CALIGRAPH. 



sat with lips apart, her large dark-blue deep-fringed eyes fixed 

 intently on the songster or the songster's hole, she appeared 

 to believe, thoroughly, that the cricket, and nobody else, was 

 the teller of his own story. This was hardly ended, when 

 there came a sound of foot-scraping at the kitchen back door, 

 which presently opened and gave entrance to a gust of east 

 wind, and to the person (not uncongenial with it) of Caleb 

 Caligraph, returned from seeing that the visitors' horses had 

 been, like their masters, hospitably entertained. 



Having rid himself of hat, great-coat, and lantern, Caleb 

 joined our company by deposit of his stiff, ungainly figure in 

 his own arm-chair, in which, by the way, he never seemed to 

 take his ease ; not, however, till he had duly recognised our 

 presence by two separate inclinations of his queer, incomplete- 

 shaped head, inclinations of twofold character, half, bows of 

 respect to his master's daughter and master's nephew, half, 

 nods of patronage to the children he had known from infancy, 

 to whom he had imparted, or was imparting, of the art and mys- 

 tery of penmanship and figures, and to whom, above all, he had 

 given presents, the annual present, that is, at Christmas, on 

 the exact anniversary we commemorate, of a king and queen of 

 gilt gingerbread. Well did we know that the royal pair were 

 even now reposing in the waistcoat-pocket of the giver, whose 

 always important air, more important than usual, gave un- 

 doubted assurance of the fact. But not for this did Lucy 

 accept with alacrity of the awkward invitation which Caleb 



