- end_line
- 6128
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6057
- text
- paleness had still another and more secret cause--the paleness of a
mother-to-be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched beneath
the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But she smiled
upon me, as apologising for the unavoidable disorder of a Monday and a
washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me down in the
best seat it had--an old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled constitution.
I thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low fire,
and--unobservantly as I could--glancing now and then about the room,
while the good woman, throwing on more sticks, said she was sorry the
room was no warmer. Something more she said, too--not repiningly,
however--of the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire
Teamster’s forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the
living tree for the Squire’s fires. It needed not her remark, whatever
it was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some being
quite mossy and toad-stooled with long lying bedded among the
accumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and
vain spluttering enough.
‘You must rest yourself here till dinner-time, at least,’ said the dame;
‘what I have you are heartily welcome to.’
I thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the
least, but go on with her usual affairs.
I was struck by the aspect of the room. The house was old, and
constitutionally damp. The window-sills had beads of exuded dampness
upon them. The shrivelled sashes shook in their frames, and the green
panes of glass were clouded with the long thaw. On some little errand
the dame passed into an adjoining chamber, leaving the door partly open.
The floor of that room was carpetless, as the kitchen was. Nothing but
bare necessaries were about me; and those not of the best sort. Not a
print on the wall; but an old volume of Doddridge lay on the smoked
chimney-shelf.
‘You must have walked a long way, sir; you sigh so with weariness.’
‘No, I am not nigh so weary as yourself, I dare say.’
‘Oh, but _I_ am accustomed to that; _you_ are not, I should think,’ and
her soft, sad, blue eye ran over my dress. ‘But I must sweep these
shavings away; husband made him a new ax-helve this morning before
sunrise, and I have been so busy washing, that I have had no time to
clear up. But now they are just the thing I want for the fire. They’d be
much better, though, were they not so green.’
Now if Blandmour were here, thought I to myself, he would call those
green shavings ‘Poor Man’s Matches,’ or ‘Poor Man’s Tinder,’ or some
pleasant name of that sort.
‘I do not know,’ said the good woman, turning round to me again, as she
stirred among her pots on the smoky fire--‘I do not know how you will
like our pudding. It is only rice, milk, and salt boiled together.’
‘Ah, what they call “Poor Man’s Pudding,” I suppose you mean.’
A quick flush, half resentful, passed over her face.
‘_We_ do not call it so, sir,’ she said, and was silent.
Upbraiding myself for my inadvertence, I could not but again think to
myself what Blandmour would have said, had he heard those words and seen
that flush.
At last a slow, heavy footfall was heard; then a scraping at the door,
and another voice said, ‘Come, wife; come, come--I must be back again in
a jiff--if you say I _must_ take all my meals at home, you must be
speedy; because the Squire---- Good-day, sir,’ he exclaimed, now first
catching sight of me as he entered the room. He turned toward his wife,
inquiringly, and stood stock-still, while the moisture oozed from his
patched boots to the floor.
- title
- Chunk 8