All was so bright in this
little cottage,--so tidy and serene,--that the very air seemed
clearer there than in the open street. The humble furniture, good of
its kind, was all shiny with "elbow grease," and some parts of it
looked quaint and well-preserved, like the heirlooms of a careful
cottage ancestry. The well polished fire-irons, and other metal
things, seemed to gather up the diffuse daylight and fling it back
in concentrated radiances that illuminated the shady cottage with
cheerful beauty. The little shelf of books, the gleaming window,
with its healthy pot flowers, the perfect order, and the trim
sweetness of everything, reminded me, as I have said, of the better
sort of houses where simple livers dwell, up among the free air of
the green hills--those green hills of Lancashire, the remembrance of
which will always stir my heart as long as it can stir to anything.
This cottage, in comparison with most of those which I had seen in
Scholes, looked like a glimpse of the star-lit blue peeping through
the clouds on a gloomy night. I found that it was the house of a
widower, a weaver of diaper, who was left with a family of eight
children to look after.
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