Читать книгу Cherry & Violet: A Tale of the Great Plague онлайн

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Whether most lads would not fall in love with Violet we cannot tell, but certainly quiet Cherry is a good woman, worthy of the hand of Mary Wilkins. We may sometimes feel that she is a damsel of the nineteenth century at masquerade in the dress of two centuries before; but we like her none the less if we fancy she is good Miss Manning in disguise.

And so we leave her and Master Blower happy in their home at Bucklands. Good man, we doubt not he tilled his garden and tended his parish well, like the Berkshire priest and poet of to-day, and, it may be, with the same thought.

“In all my borders I my true love seek

By flowery signs to set:

Praising the rose-carnation for her cheek,

Her hair the violet;

Flowers that with sweet returns each season bloom,

As each its impulse wakes,

Making air fragrant with a purple gloom,

Or whorl of crimson flakes.

And ye who blanch your glow, violets more rare,

Carnation, foam of light;

Be pledges of a beauty still more fair

When hair and cheek are white.”

All’s well that ends well. After prim Puritanism and roystering Restoration revels, after Plague and Fire, comes the quiet ending in the country’s peace.