"Thank you, Elizabeth," she said, gravely and gently, and let herself be wrapped in the thick shawl. Its gorgeous reds and yellows would, she knew, make her noticeable, even though "people might wear any thing in London." Still, she put it on with a good grace, and all through her peregrinations that day it warmed not only her shoulders, but her heart.
Coming home, she paused wistfully before a glittering shoe shop; her poor little feet were so soaked and cold. Could she possibly afford a new pair of boots? It was not a matter of vanity—she had passed that. She did not care now how ugly and shabby looked the "wee feet" that had once been praised; but she felt it might be a matter of health and prudence. Suppose she caught cold—fell ill—died: died, leaving Johanna to struggle alone; died before Robert Lyon came home. Both thoughts struck sharp. She was too young still, or had not suffered enough, calmly to think of death and dying.
"It will do no harm to inquire the price. I might stop it out in omnibuses."
For this was the way that every new article of dress had to be procured—"stopping it cut" of something else.
After trying several pairs-with a fierce, bitter blush at a small hole which the day's walking had worn in her well darned stockings, and which she was sure the shopman saw, as well as an old lady who sat opposite—Hilary bought the plainest and stoutest of boots. The bill overstepped her purse by six pence, but she promised that sum on delivery, and paid the rest. She had got into a nervous horror of letting any account stand over for a single day.
Look tenderly, reader, on this picture of struggles so small, of sufferings so uninteresting and mean. I paint it not because it is original, but because it is so awfully true. Thousands of women, well born, well reared, know it to be true—burned into them by the cruel conflict of their youth; happy they if it ended in their youth, while mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes made—especially by men—that women are naturally stingy. Possibly so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in spite of herself? It sometimes takes years of comparative ease and freedom from pecuniary cares to counteract the grinding, lowering effects of a youth of poverty.
And I paint this picture, too, literally, and not on its picturesque side—it, indeed, poverty has a picturesque side—in order to show another side which it really has—high, heroic, made up of dauntless endurance, self sacrifice, and self control Also, to indicate that blessing which narrow circumstances alone bestow, the habit of looking more to the realities than to the shows of things, and of finding pleasure in enjoyments mental rather than sensuous, inward rather than external. When people can truly recognize this they cease either to be afraid or ashamed of poverty.
Hilary was not ashamed:—not even now, when hers smote sharper and harder than it had ever done at Stowbury. She felt it a sore thing enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her. Either she was too proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world outside. She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who, though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name and address: still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat and listened to the transaction—apparently a well-to-do customer, clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs—of looking down upon her and despising her. She herself never despised any body, except for wickedness.
So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two thoughts, which in any brief space of rest always recurred, calming down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty pains—Johanna and Robert Lyon. Under the influence of these her tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old lady—apparently an acute old soul in her way—should watch her, as we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly interested.
There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which they give rise. Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as "romantic," "unnatural," "like a bit in a novel;" and yet they are facts continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition, observation, and sympathy. Nay, even the most ordinary people have known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves; firm friendships; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden revolutions of fortune and destiny: things utterly unaccountable for, except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which