As
I have said before, the husband was a calico weaver on the hand-
loom. He had to weave about seventy-three yards of a kind of check
for 3s., and a full week's work rarely brought him more than 5s. It
seems astonishing that a man should stick year after year to such
labour as this. But there is a strong adhesiveness, mingled with
timidity, in some men, which helps to keep them down. In the front
room of the cottage there was not a single article of furniture
left, so far as I can remember. The weaver's wife was in the little
kitchen, and, knowing the gentleman who was with me, she invited us
forward. She was a wan woman, with sunken eyes, and she was not much
under fifty years of age. Her scanty clothing was whole and clean.
She must have been a very good-looking woman sometime, though she
seemed to me as if long years of hard work and poor diet had sapped
the foundations of her constitution; and there was a curious
changeful blending of pallor and feverish flush upon that worn face.
But, even in the physical ruins of her countenance, a pleasing
expression lingered still. She was timid and quiet in her manner at
first, as if wondering what we had come for; but she asked me to sit
down.
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