CHARITY IN A COTTAGE
Jean Ingelow
The charity of the rich is much to be commended; but how beautiful is the charity of the poor!
Call to mind the coldest day you ever experienced. Think of the bitter wind and driving snow; think how you shook and shivered—how the sharp white particles were driven up against your face—how, within doors, the carpets were lifted like billows along the floors, the wind howled and moaned in the chimneys, windows cracked, doors rattled, and every now and then heavy lumps of snow came thundering down with a dull weight from the roof.
Now hear my story.
In one of the broad, open plains of Lincolnshire, there is a long reedy sheet of water, a favourite resort of wild ducks. At its northern extremity stand two mud cottages, old, and out of repair.
One bitter, bitter night, when the snow lay three feet deep on the ground, and a cutting east wind was driving it about, and whistling in the dry frozen reeds by the water’s edge, and swinging the bare willow trees till their branches swept the ice, an old woman sat spinning in one of these cottages before a moderately cheerful fire. Her kettle was singing on the coals, she had a reed candle, or home-made rushlight, on her table, but the full moon shone in, and was the brighter light of the two. These two cottages were far from any road, or any other habitation; the old woman was, therefore, surprised, in an old northern song, by a sudden knock at the door.
It was loud and impatient, not like the knock of her neighbours in the other cottage; but the door was bolted, and the old woman rose, and shuffling to the window, looked out and saw a shivering figure, apparently that of a youth.
“Trampers!” said the old woman, sententiously, “tramping folks be not wanted here.” So saying she went back to the fire without deigning to answer the door.
The youth upon this tried the door, and called to her to beg admittance. She heard him rap the snow from his shoes against her lintel, and again knock as if he thought she was deaf, and he should surely gain admittance if he could make her hear.