u, like that which lies before me, spiced with an old family joke or
two, and a good many new ones of your own, all exactly like yourself,
I am persuaded you cannot be very far off; and I should certainly call
you from my window to come in to tea, but from a disagreeable
suspicion that I should get no answer. But do tell me in your next
whether our globe has not been made far too much of its children, and
whether its oceans do not look very like ponds, when you cast your eye
over them to that small old apple-tree I mentioned just now.

"But you want news,--this being the place of all others to send to
from the other side of the world for news. Deerbrook has rung with
news and rumours of news since winter. The first report after the ice
broke up in March was, that I was going to be married to Deborah
Giles. `Who is Deborah Giles?' you will ask. She is not going to be
a relation of yours, in the first place. Secondly, she is the
daughter of the boatman whose boats Enderby and I are wont to hire.
The young lady may be all that ever woman was, for aught I know, for I
never spoke to her in my life, except that I one day asked her for
something to bale the boat with: but I heard that the astonishment of
Deerbrook was, that I was engaged to a woman who could not read or
write. So you see we of Deerbrook follow our old pastime of first
inventing marvels, and then being scarcely able to believe them. I
rather suspect that we have some wag among us who fabricates news, to
see how much will be received and retailed: but perhaps these rumours,
even the wildest of them, rise `by natural exhalation' from the nooks
and crevices of village life. My five years' residence has not
qualified me to pronounce absolutely upon this.

"Old Smithson is dead. You could not have seen him half-a-dozen times
when you were here; but you may chance to recollect him,--a short old
man, with white hair, and deep-set grey eyes. He is less of a loss to
the village than almost any other man would be. He was so shy and
quiet, and kept so much within his own gate, that some fancied he must
be a miser: but though he spent little on himself, his money made its
way abroad, and his heirs are rather disappointed at finding the
property no larger than when he came into it. He is much missed by
his household, and, I own, by myself. I was not often with him: but
it was something to fe