Biddy. Open your eyes' 195

'O little hearts! that throb and beat,
With such impatient, feverish heat,
Such limitless and strong desires.'--LONGFELLOW.

THE RECTORY CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

THE PARLOUR BEHIND THE SHOP

'I was very solitary indeed.'
(_Visit to the Cousins_).--MARY LAMB.

The blinds had been drawn down for some time in the back parlour behind
Mr. Fairchild's shop in Pier Street, the principal street in the little
town of Seacove. And the gas was lighted, though it was not turned up
very high. It was a great thing to have gas; it had not been known at
Seacove till recently. For the time of which I am writing is now a good
many years ago, thirty or forty at least.

Seacove, though a small place, was not so out-of-the-way in some
respects as many actually larger towns, for it was a seaport, though not
a very important one. Ships came in from all parts of the globe, and
sailed away again in due course to the far north, and still farther off
south; to the great other world of America, too, no doubt, and to the
ancient eastern lands. But it was the vessels going to or coming from
the strange mysterious north--the land of everlasting snow, where the
reindeer and, farther north still, the white bear have their home, and
where the winter is one long, long night--it was somehow the thought of
the north that had the most fascination for the little girl who was
sitting alone in the dull parlour behind the shop this late November
evening. And among the queer outlandish-looking sailors who from time to
time were to be seen on the wharf or about the Seacove streets, now and
then looking in to buy a sheet of paper and an envelope in her father's
shop, it was the English ones belonging to the whalers or to the herring
smacks bound for the north who interested Celestina by far the most.

This evening she was not thinking of sailors or ships or anything like
that; her mind was full of her own small affairs. She had got two new
dolls, quite tiny ones--Celestina did not care for big dolls--and long
as the daylight lasted she had been perfectly happy dressing them. But
the daylight was gone now--it was always rather in a hurry to say
good-night to the back parlour--and the gas was too dim for her to see
clearly by, even if she had had anything else to do, which she had not,
till mother could give her a scrap or