The mother's face and 'Lisbeth's had altered more than Dickon's and Gorham's, but their being altered I think had changed Dickon's and Gorham's too. Do you know what had changed them? Why, 'Lisbeth had made up her mind to try to be contented and to use her mother's head. She was so much more pleasant looking that you would have been surprised at the change.
You have seen her before this, with your mind's eye, I know; that is, you have imagined how she might have looked, and you have always seen her looking as though she was dissatisfied; as though she was wishing for something she had not; as though she was trying to think of something to do, or somewhere to go, as though she was about to make use of her own head contrary to that of her mother. But now she looked more cheerful and comfortable; indeed like a different girl entirely. You see she made up her mind to be a different girl entirely, and to try to work by her mother's head, and when 'Lisbeth made up her mind about anything we know that it was made up.
'Lisbeth had improved very much. Yet she was 'Lisbeth; 'Lisbeth working a great deal by her mother's head instead of by her own.
Beside this 'Lisbeth had a pleasant prospect before her; a very pleasant prospect indeed. She did not very often lose sight of this prospect; I mean the prospect of going a hundred miles from London. She looked so much more pleasant than formerly that you would not think, at sight of her, "there is a girl who is not satisfied in the place where she is growing, or with the things she finds around her; she looks uncomfortable."
I think that 'Lisbeth was better contented the last weeks she lived in London than during any week of her life, except the week before she came to London. Her contentment had changed everything very much; as I said, it had changed the faces; the faces were changed because everybody felt happier. Things were very different in those two rooms because 'Lisbeth was different.
For two whole months they were getting ready to go away; they were working and saving and wondering and smiling and laughing and hoping before they left the dreadful old rooms, but then they were such different months from all the others spent there that they were short months; that is, they seemed short.
The boys were happier when their mother and 'Lisbeth were bright and happy; their mother was happy when her children were good and wore bright faces. 'Lisbeth wore a bright face when she tried to be content with things as she found them, and did not run about the streets of London trying to sell gingerbread cats and dogs and doll-babies, trying to earn pence with sweeping streets or pulling wires, or making wigs. So as everybody was happier than they had been the months seemed short.
Who cared that the walls were black and the rooms little and the street too little to be called a street? Nobody.
All the difference came by 'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to be contented to help mother in mother's way instead of her own way; by 'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to mix her earnestness with her mother's judgment.
They left the little dark rooms, in the dirty old house, and all the shows, and people, and carriages and houses of London, and went back where they first grew, back to the very house under the walnut tree where the bits of the hogshead still blew about—the hogshead which had once opened its mouth.