new or expect to know." I did like him for saying this.
And something told me that, in spite of his domineering way with me, he
wouldn't be one to put on high and mighty airs with Mrs. James, as
Grandma does.

English Street, of course, is the main street of Carlisle and runs north
to William Rufus's Castle that stands looking over the moors toward the
border, eight miles away. Grandma never would let Heppie take me into
the Castle, because it's turned into barracks now, and swarming with
soldiers. She said that her father called soldiers Men of Blood, and
seemed to think that ought to put me off from wishing to go in, but it
didn't a bit, rather the other way round. I love soldiers in books, and
should like to meet some.

It was near the old Citadel of Henry VIII, where the towers have been
turned into court-houses, that we had to turn off, and it is there that
English Street really begins. It didn't take Vedder long to find Flemish
Passage--which Mrs. James says is named after the Flemish masons William
Rufus brought over to make the Castle, men who settled down afterward to
live in Carlisle. Maybe there were Flemish houses on the spot in those
days--who knows? I love to think there were; and though there isn't a
trace of anything half so ancient as William, Flemish Passage can't have
changed much from what it must have been in the Middle Ages. Even the
people who live there are mostly old, and as the big gray car turned
into the small, quiet cul-de-sac, elderly heads appeared at antique
windows of all the medieval houses. I should think nothing so exciting
had happened in Flemish Passage at all events since Carlisle surrendered
to Prince Charlie. The car looked enormous, as if it were a dragon
swelling to twice its size in rage because it knew there would be no
room for it to turn round when it wanted to get out.

Mrs. James house used to be like the others till she had the two front
windows thrown into one, and took to keeping a shop. The way she
happened to do that was just as it was with Miss Mattie in that darling
"Cranford" I found with father's name in it; only Mrs. James, of course,
was married and Miss Mattie wasn't. I wanted to tell Mr. Somerled about
her, and how her husband, a distant cousin of Grandma's, was the doctor
that couldn't cure my father. Mrs. James herself wasn't a cousin, and
wasn't even of the north, so Grandma never thought of her, as she has no
opinion of southern people. Mrs. James was D