Note 176 — Chapter IX · A GALLANT GIRL AND HER FAMILY

Miss Every’s companion on this visit was a Miss Hambly—name of ill omen! Mr. William Pollard gave me an amusing addition to Borrow’s observations. “At the beginning of last century,” said he, “things were very different from what they are now. We had no police or anything of the kind, except parish constables. Miss Hambly was a descendant of Edmund Hambly, the parish constable of Menheniot, whom George Borrow’s father fought at Menheniot Fair. He detested the name, and was as near being rude to Miss Hambly as he could be. He neglected her all the evening, while Miss Every was in great feather with him. This is her book.” It was an old edition of “The Gypsies of Spain,” in Murray’s Home and Colonial Library, with the signature “M. Every” in a fine-pointed handwriting and faded ink; the book had been kept with care; here and there it was interleaved with neat little cuttings of sentimental verses, slit from casual newspapers. It should have lain beside a Victorian jar of rose-leaves.