“And her husband is dead?”
“Yes, ma’am. Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no more. We have always kept off the parish, ma’am. This bit of a cottage was my poor wife’s, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there’d be nothing for it but to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there’s such a lot there as I could not go and die among.”
He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they found out that all was as he said. He had seen better days, and held his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early death of poor Mole, and the old man’s crippled state, had thrown the whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage was almost falling down.
“Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!” cried the ladies, as they went out. “Well, we can do something here. I’ll come and read to him every week,” exclaimed Dora.
“And I will knit him a warm jacket,” said Mary, “and surely Edmund could help them to prop up that wretched cottage.”
“What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good! Where are we going now?”
“I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church,” said Mary. “That rough-tiled roof.”
“It has a bend in the middle, like a broken back. I must sketch it,” said Dora.
“Why, there’s Edmund, getting over the churchyard stile.”
“Ay, he can’t keep long away from you, Madam Mary.”