THE COTTAGE BY THE WOOD
She had herself put to rights the little tumble-down house, which let the weather in when first she appropriated it. And she had, by her industry and thrift, managed to make a comfortable living, cutting the rushes from the riverside, and thatching her own roof. Often you might see her, crouched low and bent by rheumatism, a straw hat tied beneath her nut-cracker chin, and her red cloak battling with the weather, while she gathered sticks from the woodlands, or took her donkey laden to the town.
“There com’ Granny Gather-stick,” the children would cry. “Some say as she d’ fly by night.” And they would scamper into their cottages, and peer back from their mothers’ apron-folds.
You have only to live in a village for a year without going away from it, to understand how busy people can be manufacturing stories about each other. Given plenty of time, and every one knowing every one else, there is sufficient irresponsible mischief in the average human heart to bring about the same result as deliberate malice.
How many of our friends are there, I wonder, who have not at various times given utterance to some thorny thrust, or spiky supposition, at our expense, loving us, nevertheless, quite warmly all the while? It is a valuable training to be early taught the eleventh commandment: “Thy neighbour shalt thou not discuss.” Detraction, defamation and dislike may be grouped under the comfortable word “Gossip.” We often flatter ourselves it is the human interest that we feel.
And so it came about that on Granny Gatherstick centred the gossip of the village. She was first looked on with suspicion, because they did not understand her, and, with ordinary minds, to fail to understand generally means to dislike. Passive dislike grew to fear, and from fear of her grew lies and wicked charges, of which the unfortunate woman was wholly innocent.
“Whoi doan’t her be satisfied wi’ the ways of other folk? Whoi can’t her be in her bed at night time, sem as other folk, ’sted o’ flitting about a’ gathering of them nesty pisonous stuffs? d’ be only when the moon’s full, that she d’ stir. Noa, noa, say I, let folk keep to folk’s ways, and then there won’t be nothen’ said about un. If a body come to get the name of Mother Midnight, it’s not for nothen’, of that you may be sure; I don’t hold wi’ such ways.”
This was what was felt generally among the village folk, and, if you come to think of it, it is not only among the uneducated that such feeling prevails. How seldom people are allowed in this life to take their own way unmolested. Even children playing together interfere, and scold, and bicker about trifles, and family life among grown-up people may be devastated by the same pest.
Let us early write on the tablets of our heart: “Let others lead their own life, in their own way.” Then shall our ways be ways of pleasantness, and all our paths be peace.
One day a little boy and girl were playing in the woodlands, which you see painted in that picture before you now. They were friends, not brother and sister, and their names were Martin and Faith. They were wood-cutter’s children, and often they played together, for their homes stood near each other in the wood.