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“Is there any such thing as a straight street in all Sandwich?” he asked.

“Not one straight street in the whole town.”

“Any trade, miss?”

“As little as possible–and that is expiring.”

“A decayed place, in short?”

“Thoroughly decayed.”

My tone seemed to astonish him. “You speak as if you were proud of its being a decayed place,” he said.

I quite respected him; this was such an intelligent remark to make. We do enjoy our decay: it is our chief distinction. Progress and prosperity everywhere else; decay and dissolution here. As a necessary consequence, we produce our own impression, and we like to be original. The sea deserted us long ago: it once washed our walls, it is now two miles away from us–we don’t regret the sea. We had sometimes ninety-five ships in our harbor, Heaven only knows how many centuries ago; we now have one or two small coasting vessels, half their time aground in a muddy little river–we don’t regret our harbor. But one house in the town is daring enough to anticipate the arrival of resident visitors, and announces furnished apartments to let. What a becoming contrast to our modern neighbor, Ramsgate! Our noble market-place exhibits the laws made by the corporation; and every week there are fewer and fewer people to obey the laws. How convenient! Look at our one warehouse by the river side–with the crane generally idle, and the windows mostly boarded up; and perhaps one man at the door, looking out for the job which his better sense tells him cannot possibly come. What a wholesome protest against the devastating hurry and over-work elsewhere, which has shattered the nerves of the nation! “Far from me and from my friends” (to borrow the eloquent language of Doctor Johnson) “be such frigid enthusiasm as shall conduct us indifferent and unmoved” over the bridge by which you enter Sandwich, and pay a toll if you do it in a carriage. “That man is little to be envied (Doctor Johnson again) who can lose himself in our labyrinthine streets, and not feel that he has reached the welcome limits of progress, and found a haven of rest in an age of hurry.”

I am wandering again. Bear with the unpremeditated enthusiasm of a citizen who only attained years of discretion at her last birthday. We shall soon have done with Sandwich; we are close to the door of the inn.

“You can’t mistake it now, sir,” I said. “Good-morning.”

He looked down at me from under his beautiful eyelashes (have I mentioned that I am a little woman?), and he asked in his persuasive tones: “Must we say good-by?”

I made him a bow.

“Would you allow me to see you safe home?” he suggested.

Any other man would have offended me. This man blushed like a boy, and looked at the pavement instead of looking at me. By this time I had made up my mind about him. He was not only a gentleman beyond all doubt, but a shy gentleman as well. His bluntness and his odd remarks were, as I thought, partly efforts to disguise his shyness, and partly refuges in which he tried to forget his own sense of it. I answered his audacious proposal amiably and pleasantly. “You would only lose your way again,” I said, “and I should have to take you back to the inn for the second time.”

Wasted words! My obstinate stranger only made another proposal.

“I have ordered lunch here,” he said, “and I am quite alone.” He stopped in confusion, and looked as if he rather expected me to box his ears. “I shall be forty next birthday,” he went on; “I am old enough to be your father.” I all but burst out laughing, and stepped across the street, on my way home. He followed me. “We might invite the landlady to join us,” he said, looking the picture of a headlong man, dismayed by the consciousness of his own imprudence. “Couldn’t you honor me by lunching with me if we had the landlady?” he asked.