and I had been out to Heathbridge for a day, working hard.
Heathbridge was near Hornby, for our line of railway was above
half finished. Of course, a day's outing was a great thing to
tell about in my weekly letters; and I fell to describing the
country--a fault I was not often guilty of. I told my father of
the bogs, all over wild myrtle and soft moss, and shaking ground
over which we had to carry our line; and how Mr Holdsworth and I
had gone for our mid-day meals--for we had to stay here for two
days and a night--to a pretty village hard by, Heathbridge
proper; and how I hoped we should often have to go there, for the
shaking, uncertain ground was puzzling our engineers--one end of
the line going up as soon as the other was weighted down. (I had
no thought for the shareholders' interests, as may be seen; we
had to make a new line on firmer ground before the junction
railway was completed.) I told all this at great length, thankful
to fill up my paper. By return letter, I heard that a
second-cousin of my mother's was married to the Independent
minister of Hornby, Ebenezer Holman by name, and lived at
Heathbridge proper; the very Heathbridge I had described, or so
my mother believed, for she had never seen her cousin Phillis
Green, who was something of an heiress (my father believed),
being her father's only child, and old Thomas Green had owned an
estate of near upon fifty acres, which must have come to his
daughter. My mother's feeling of kinship seemed to have been
strongly stirred by the mention of Heathbridge; for my father
said she desired me, if ever I went thither again, to make
inquiry for the Reverend Ebenezer Holman; and if indeed he lived
there, I was further to ask if he had not married one Phillis
Green; and if both these questions were answered in the
affirmative, I was to go and introduce myself as the only child