The Crock of Gold | Page 3

as before,
was more mechanical, less high-motived: and many a year of dreary
widowhood he mourned a loss all the greater, though any thing but
bitterer, for the infants so left motherless. To these, now grown into a
strapping youth and a bright-eyed graceful girl, had he been the

tenderest of nurses, and well supplied the place of her whom they had
lost. Neighbours would have helped him gladly--sometimes did; and
many was the hinted offer (disinterested enough, too, for in that match
penury must have been the settlement, and starvation the dower), of
giving them a mother's kindly care; but Roger could not quite so soon
forget the dead: so he would carry his darlings with him to his work,
and feed them with his own hard hands; the farmers winked at it, and
never said a word against the tiny trespassers; their wives and daughters
loved the little dears, bringing them milk and possets; and holy angels
from on high may have oft-times hovered about this rude nurse, tending
his soft innocents a-field, and have wept over the poor widower and his
orphans, tears of happy sorrow and benevolent affection. Yea, many a
good angel has shed blessings on their heads!
Within the last three years, and sixteen from the date of his first great
grief, Roger had again got married. His daughter was growing into
early womanhood, and his son gave him trouble at times, and the
cottage wanted a ruling hand over it when he was absent, and
rheumatism now and then bade him look out for a nurse before old age,
and Mary Alder was a notable middle-aged careful sort of soul, and so
she became Mary Acton. All went on pretty well, until Mrs. Acton
began to have certain little ones of her own; and then the step-mother
would break out (a contingency poor Roger hadn't thought of), separate
interests crept in, and her own children fared before the others; so it
came to pass that, however truly there was a ruling hand at home, and
however well the rheumatism got nursed (for Mary was a good wife in
the main), the grown-up son and daughter felt themselves a little jostled
out. Grace, gentle and submissive, found all her comforts shrunk within
the space of her father and her Bible; Thomas, self-willed and
open-hearted, sought his pleasure any where but at home, and was like
to be taking to wrong courses through domestic bickering: Grace had
the dangerous portion, beauty, added to her lowly lot, and attracted
more admiration than her father wished, or she could understand; while
the frank and bold spirit of Thomas Acton exposed him to the perilous
friendship of Ben Burke the poacher, and divers other questionable
characters.

Of these elements, then, are our labourer and his family composed; and
before Roger Acton goes abroad at earliest streak of dawn, we will take
a casual peep within his dwelling. It consists of four bare rubble walls,
enclosing a grouted floor, worn unevenly, and here and there in holes,
and puddly. There were but two rooms in the tenement, one on the
ground, and one over-head; which latter is with no small difficulty got
at by scaling a ladder-like stair-case that fronts the cottage-door. This
upper chamber, the common dormitory, for all but Thomas, who sleeps
down stairs, has a thin partition at one end of it, to screen off the
humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles of
the day; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, and
overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the
father and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shattery
casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of
summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of
wintry nights. A few articles of crockery and some burnished tins
decorate the shelves of the lower apartment; which used to be much
tidier before the children came, and trimmer still when Grace was sole
manager: in a doorless cupboard are apparent sundry coarse edibles, as
the half of a huge unshapely home-made loaf, some white country
cheese, a mass of lumpy pudding, and so forth; beside it, on the
window-sill, is better bread, a well-thumbed Bible, some tracts, and a
few odd volumes picked up cheap at fairs; an old musket (occasionally
Ben's companion, sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a
double rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of
pedlars, in honour of George Barnwell, the Prodigal Son, the Sailor's
Return, and the Death of Nelson, decorate the walls, and an illuminated
Christmas carol is pasted over the mantel-piece: which, among other
chattels and possessions, conspicuously bears its own burden of Albert
and Victoria--two plaster heads, resplendently