The White Rose of Langley / A Story of the Olden Time

“Oh, how full of briars is this working-day world!” Shakspere .
“It is so cold, Mother!”
The woman addressed languidly roused herself from the half-sheltered nook of the forest in which she and her child had taken refuge. She was leaning with her back supported by a giant oak, and the child was in her arms. The age of the child was about eight. The mother, though still young in years, was old before her time, with hard work and exposure, and it might be also with sorrow. She sat up, and looked wearily over the winter scene before her. There was nothing of the querulous, complaining tone of the little girl’s voice in hers; only the dull, sullen apathy of hopeless endurance.
“Cold, child!” she said. “’Tis like to be colder yet when the night cometh.”
“O Mother! and all snow now!”
“There be chiller gear than snow, maid,” replied the mother bitterly.
“But it had been warmer in London, Mother?—if we had not lost our road.”
“May-be,” was the answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that it did not signify.
The child did not reply; and the woman continued to sit upright, and look forward, with an absent expression in her face, indicating that the mind was not where the eyes were.
“Only snow and frost!” she muttered—not speaking to the child. “Nought beyond, nor here ne there. Nay, snow is better than snowed-up hearts. Had it been warmer in London? May-be the hearts there had been as frosty as at Pleshy. Well! it will be warm in the grave, and we shall soon win yonder.”
“Be there fires yonder, Mother?” asked the child innocently.