"
And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that
Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That
she had been to other villages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton,
and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to
Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe
--not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I had
never been there--had never even heard of it! People that
went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was
such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said
afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.
Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in
the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before
me. A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin
she might have been taken for a woman of Spain--the most
natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth.
But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with
a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her shame,
too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural;
for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more
clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has
entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would
have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the
English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
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