The young folks in the same carriage meanwhile
are looking forwards. Nothing escapes their keen eyes--not a flower at
the side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced children at the
gate: the landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, the town
yonder looks beautiful, and do you think they have learned to be
difficult about the dishes at the inn?
Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his wife and children in
the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house on the road with an
ordinary little garden in the front, we will say, and quite an ordinary
knocker to the door, and as many sashed windows as you please, quite
common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others;
or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary
tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if you like--wife
and daughter look at these objects without the slightest particle of
curiosity or interest. What is a brass knocker to them but a lion's
head, or what not? and a thorn-tree with pool beside it, but a pool in
which a thorn and a jackass are reflected?
But you remember how once upon a time your heart used to beat, as you
beat on that brass knocker, and whose eyes looked from the window above.
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