Women of the Country | Page 8

of her triumph over her disability was, that no one dreamed of calling her "Poor Mary." Like her friend, Anne Hilton, she was a member of the little wayside chapel, which, with all that it meant, made a centre of warmth and fellowship for both lonely women.
CHAPTER VI
So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day, a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now drew it home again behind the hill.
As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light, like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims.
A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice, entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.
"You've a quiet life of it here," he said, rising to shake hands with Anne, who came into the room at the same moment, bending a little as she walked with the slightly anxious expression of one preoccupied with pain.
"Yes," she replied, "it's very pleasant in the kitchen when the sun goes off. Nearly every evening at this time something about the room brings to my mind the hymn--
"When quiet in my house I sit, Thy book be my companion still."
The youth looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had brought upon himself a sermon unawares, and that being actually inside the house, and having sat down, he might have difficulty in extricating himself. So he said, rather to turn the conversation from its personal character, than from any sense of the fitness of his remarks.
"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of rheumatism."
"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as much as I wanted."
"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me oftenest."
"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not hear. She had understood.
"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking man--good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and his wife went off with a trainer too."
"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her voice.
"Well, you know," expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones at the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he had successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the