In Carlisle this giving one's farm a name was
looked upon as a piece of affectation; but if a place must be
named why not give it a sensible name with some meaning to it? Why
Golden Milestone, when Pinewood or Hillslope or, if you wanted to
be very fanciful, Ivy Lodge, might be had for the taking?
He had lived alone at Golden Milestone since his mother's death;
he had been twenty then and he was close upon forty now, though he
did not look it. But neither could it be said that he looked
young; he had never at any time looked young with common youth;
there had always been something in his appearance that stamped him
as different from the ordinary run of men, and, apart from his
shyness, built up an intangible, invisible barrier between him and
his kind. He had lived all his life in Carlisle; and all the
Carlisle people knew of or about him--although they thought they
knew everything--was that he was painfully, abnormally shy. He
never went anywhere except to church; he never took part in
Carlisle's simple social life; even with most men he was distant
and reserved; as for women, he never spoke to or looked at them;
if one spoke to him, even if she were a matronly old mother in
Israel, he was at once in an agony of painful blushes. He had no
friends in the sense of companions; to all outward appearance his
life was solitary and devoid of any human interest.
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