CHAPTER 6 - Mina Murray's Journal, part 3

I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale fishing in the old days.

He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said, "I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss.

My grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock. He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps.

The steps are a great feature on the place. They lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve. The slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them. I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey.

I shall go home too. Lucy went out, visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did not go. 1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him.

He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody.

If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views.