4 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



Her father, Philip Best, of Titton Brook, near Stourport, 

 was a yeoman, who cultivated his paternal acres, and 

 added to his income occasionally by working for hire 

 under neighbouring farmers. His wife, the mother of 

 Hannah Best, was a virago of a bygone type. She was 

 a thorough shrew, who kept her children, and for that 

 matter her husband, in wholesome awe of her tongue and 

 hand. Even when her daughters were grown women, 

 Mrs. Best would scruple not, when her temper was aroused, 

 to whip off her high-heeled shoe and apply personal 

 chastisement in no perfunctory fashion. It was while 

 smarting under one of these humiliating inflictions that 

 Hannah Best had fled to an asylum in the house of Mrs. 

 Green, in Worcester. 



The beauty, the strength, the pastoral richness of the 

 nature of Hannah Best produced an instant and extra- 

 ordinary effect on Thomas Gosse. She was one of his 

 Sicilian shepherdesses come to life again. Theocritus him- 

 self seemed to have prophesied of this beautiful child of a 

 race of neatherds. Like another daughter of Polybotas, 

 she had but just come from piping to the reapers on the 

 Titton farm. He fell violently in love, for the first time 

 in his life. Hannah Best, when he proposed, was startled 

 and repelled. This grey and withered man, who never 

 smiled, without fortune, without prospects — what sort of 

 husband was that for her ? But Mr. and Mrs. Green, 

 glad perhaps to have an embarrassing knot thus opportunely 

 cut, presented other views of the matter to her. He was 

 a gentleman and a man of education, such as Hannah 

 could not hope otherwise to secure ; he was a man of pure 

 conduct and pious habits ; he would doubtless thrive when 

 once her strength of purpose and practical good sense 

 should supply a backbone to his character. Not enthusi- 

 astically, she consented to marry him, and after a fashion 



