Further on she came upon two ragged women, down on their knees upon an old mound, raking over the muddy ashes, and picking out the wet and dirty cinders which were to be found amongst them, and then stowing them away in an old sack.
"What are you doing?" Marjorie asked.
"Getting cinders for the fire."
"Will they burn?" she asked in astonishment.
"Yes, with a little coal. It's better than no fire at all."
Marjorie walked on, sick at heart, as she thought of the kind of homes that those women must have. The cold, icy wind was blowing in her face, and she shivered as she thought of the apology for a fire which would be kindled with those lifeless cinders.
After this she passed more houses and more mounds; but nowhere in the whole place did she see a vestige of anything whatever that was pleasant to look upon. The houses were destitute of paint, the doors and window-frames were bare and unsightly, the numberless broken panes were filled in with rag or paper. More than one of the houses was in ruins—every window broken, and the walls ready to fall in. The mines below had caused these houses to sink; they had been pronounced unsafe, and had been left deserted, but no one had taken the trouble to clear away the ugly, dismal ruins. There they stood, blackened with furnace smoke, unsightly and melancholy objects.
Only two coal-pits were working, so a man told her, who was smoking a dirty clay pipe at his door. Some had stopped because of bad trade; some were worked out; some had filled with water, and were therefore abandoned. Yet at the mouth of each of these deserted pits, the heavy wooden frame and great wheel still remained—a gloomy memento of more prosperous days.
In every direction in which she looked, Marjorie saw unmistakable marks of squalid, cheerless poverty; the only prosperous-looking building being the public-house at the corner, which appeared to do a thriving trade. The whole country was honeycombed with mines, and, in consequence, many of the houses had sunk below the level of the others in the same row. Everything in Daisy Bank seemed crooked and out of shape. Other cottages were scattered amongst the furnace débris, were built anywhere and everywhere that a place could be found for them, on different levels and in sundry nooks and corners of the hilly waste.
Then she came to higher mounds still, and crossing these she saw deep, black pools in their hollows, stretches of dark, stagnant water, which never reflected anything that was pretty or bright except the moon in God's pure heaven above. Here and there some one, more thrifty than his neighbours, had made a little garden in the waste; but what could grow in such a smoky atmosphere and in such poor and barren soil? A few struggling plants of the most hardy kinds were all that the best garden in Daisy Bank could produce.