The true northerner., 1895-05-31
MY CHARMING LODGER.

MY CHARMING LODGER.
To young curate not long from col
lege, and accustomed TO home, that
remote Fellside parsonage at Brigend
was essentially exile, hard enough to
bear, if not quite as bad as Siberia.
had no one to whom | could fall back
as companion. My sister was bound
to remain at home with my mother;
and she and composed the family.
For her own part, my mother was too
delicate to undertake the long journey
from London to the north, or TO en-
dure the roughness inseparable from
such place as Brigend. when she got
there. We were eight miles from a
station and the road we had TO travel
over was more like the dry bed of a
river than civilized highway which
had once been macadamized, and was
presumably still kept in repair by the
ratepayers and occupiers.
Things being So, and the long au-
tumn evenings daily deepening and
lenghtening, with the prospect OF that
dreary, lonely winter before me, de-
termined to advertise for some young
man to whom plain living and high
thinking, with plenty of leisure and
little to pay, would be powerful in
ducements to come-thus sharing while
tightening my solitude, as well as
halving the very moderate expenses of
my housekeeping. Moderate, hows
ever, as they were, my exiguous
stipend could barely meet them; and a
company in the weekly bills would be
a gain.
therefore put into the paper an ad-
vertisement for a paying companion,
and in due course received reply. AS
it was the only one did receive l had
no difficulty in making a choice, and
was thus spared both trouble and re-
sponsibility. After the interchange of
few letters, setting times and terms,
the die was cast and things were ar
ranged and Montgomery Somerset was
booked 10 come on October 21-which
day, pace the Thirteen club, / well re-
member fell on Friday. Meanwhile
undertook to meet him at the station
with some difficulty securing a fly
for his transit to the parsonage. The
roads were SO bad that few jobmasters
cared to send their cattle along them.
Which fact added TO the desolation of
the place.
Unpunctual as usual, and a good half
hour late. the train drew up at the lit
tie Fellside station which served this
desolate tract of country. The one
xnlitar,- ErSt ..laSS a1inhfal
was pleasantly impressed by his APP
pearance. Tall, good-looking, we'll
dressed, he was also we'll inanncred-in
a way-not wholly SO, but quite passa-
bly,. He was tribe nervous, for
noticed how sharply he looked about
him, and how rapid but eager the
glances which scanned the car
riages behind his own and the few
loiterers on the platform. Even Bob
Liant, the stolid old constable of the
district, came in for look which
seemed to take him in from his helmet
to his boots. OF the two thought at
the time that Montgomery Somerset
was more of a detective than our own
local Sherlock Holmes, and more like
ly to track a criminal and hunt him
down. BE that. however, as it may, in
short time we were both seated in
the rattle-trap old shandrydan, which
was all that Fellside had to offer, and
jolting over the dry watercourse to the
isolation of Brigend.
AS the days passed by had cause to
congratulate myself on my good for
tune; though. indeed. it was SO good as
to make me wonder how it ever came
about. My lodger was simply charm
ing, always good -humorea ,complaisant,
cohtented. lie Mas not, perhaps, SO
we'll educated as might have been ex-
pected, and knew less than an ordinary
eentlefdan of classics, mathematics and
the rest of the subjects known as of
course to educated men. In fact, he
knew nothing at all of these things,
and his reading was not above the
average of schoolboy's blundering
pronunciation. lie explained this by
saying that he had never been sent to
any good school-at least not for long
together. His father had been in the
army; he was the only child, and pa
rental love had got the better of pa
rental foresight, for neither father nor
mother would part with him. Hence
his education had been desultory-and
he had learned nothing from the root
upward, having forgotten, indeed, all
that he had ever acquired. AS he was
anxious to know more than he did, his
| ignorance was not so much bar rier as
a spur, and we passed the long even
ings in study, which l strove to make
as interesting and little irksome as I
could.
Meanwhile, was glad TO see how,
under the regular regime and brisk
Fellside air, my lodger's nervousness
gradually subsidized, and he became less
watchful, more composed and, as one
might say, sleeker altogether than lac
had been when he came.