" "
Well, we mun grin an' abide till it's o'er, aw guess. It's a mad mak
o' wark. But it'll happen turn up for best i'th end ov o'."
CHAPTER XIX.
"Mother, heaw leets we han no brade,--
Heawever con it be?
Iv aw don't get some brade to eat,
Aw think 'at aw mun dee."
--Hungry Child.
It was about noon when we left the old weaver, nursing his rheumatic
limbs by the side of a dim fire, in his chapel-like little house.
His daughter, a tall, clean, shy girl, began to peel a few potatoes
just before we came away. It is a touching thing, just now, to see
so many decent cottages of thrifty working men brought low by the
strange events of these days; cottages in which everything betokens
the care of well-conducted lives, and where the sacred fire of
independent feeling is struggling through the long frost of
misfortune with patient dignity. It is a touching thing to see the
simple joys of life, in homes like these, crushed into a speechless
endurance of penury, and the native spirit of self-reliance writhing
in unavoidable prostration, and hoping on from day to day for better
times.
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