The reader need not be surprised, therefore, on learning that this woman, with all her apathy of character on the general matters of life, was accessible to the feeling or principle we have just described, nor that the conversation she had just had with the strange woman, both disturbed and alarmed her.
On returning, she found her husband and step-daughter both at home; the latter hacking up some white thorn wood with an old hatchet, for the fire, and the other sitting with his head bent gloomily upon his hand, as if ruminating upon the vicissitudes of a troubled or ill-spent life.
Having deposited her burthen, she sat down, and drawing a long breath, wiped her face with the corner of a blue praskeen which she always wore, and this she did with a serious and stern face, intimating, as it were, that her mind was engaged upon matters of deep interest, whatever they might have been.
“What's that you're doin'?” she inquired of Sarah, in a grave, sharp voice.
“Have you no eyes?” replied the other; “don't you see what I am doin'?”
“Where did you get them white thorns that you're cuttin' up?”
“Where did I get them, is it?”
“Ay; I said so.”
“Why, where they grew—ha, ha, ha! There's information for you.”
“Oh, God help you! how do you expect to get through life at all?”