of many besides ourselves, especially on a Saturday, when the hard-worked Mexington folk were once free to ramble about – boys and girls not much older than ourselves among them, for in those days children were allowed to work in factories much younger than they do now. We did not mind meeting some of our townsfellows. On the contrary, we felt a good deal of interest in them and liked to hear their queer way of talking, though we could scarcely understand anything they said. And we were very much interested indeed in some of the stories Lydia, who belonged to this part of the country, told us of her own life, in a village a few miles away, where there were two or three great factories, at which all the people about worked – men, women, and children too, so that sometimes, except for babies and very old people, the houses seemed quite deserted.
"And long ago before that," said Lydia, "when mother was a little lass, it was such a pretty village – cottages all over with creepers and honeysuckle – not ugly rows of houses as like each other as peas. The people worked at home on their own hand-looms then."
Lydia had a sense of the beautiful!
On our way home, of course, we called at Miss Fryer's – this time we had a whole shilling to spend, for there was Sunday's tea to think of as well as to-day's. We had never had so much at a time, and our consultation took a good while. We decided at last on seven crumpets and seven Bath buns as usual, and in addition to these, three large currant tea-cakes, which our friend Susan told us would be all the better for toasting if not too fresh. And the remaining threepence we invested in a slice of sweet sandwich, which she told us would be perfectly good if kept in a tin tightly closed. The old Quakeress for once, I have always suspected, departed on this occasion from her rule of exact payment for all purchases, for it certainly seemed a very large slice of sweet sandwich for threepence.
We were rather tired with our walk that evening and went to bed early. Nothing more was said by Haddie about his misgivings. I think he hoped I had forgotten what had passed, but I had not. It had all come back again, the strange feeling of change and trouble in the air which had made me question mamma that morning two or three weeks ago.
But I did not as yet really believe it. I had never known what sorrow and trouble actually are. It is not many children who reach even the age I was then with so sunny and peaceful an experience of life. That anything could happen to us – to me– like what happened to "Ellen" in The Wide, Wide World, I simply could not believe; even though if any one had talked to me about it and said that troubles must come and do come to all, and to some much more than to others, and that they might be coming to us, I should have agreed at once and said yes, of course I knew that was true.
The next day, Sunday, was very rainy. It made us feel dull, I think, though we did not really mind a wet Sunday as much as another day, for we never went a walk on Sunday. It was not thought right, and as we had no garden the day would have been a very dreary one to us, except for mamma.
She managed to make it pleasant. We went to church in the morning, and in the evening too sometimes. I think all children like going to church in the evening; there is something grown-up about it. And the rest of the day mamma managed to find interesting things for us to do. She generally had some book which she kept for reading aloud on Sunday – Dr. Adams's Allegories, "The Dark River" and others, were great favourites, and so were Bishop Wilberforce's Agathos. Some of them frightened me a little, but it was rather a pleasant sort of fright, there was something grand and solemn about it.
Then we sang hymns sometimes, and we always had a very nice tea, and mamma, and father too now and then, told us stories about when they were children and what they did on Sundays. It was much stricter for them than for us, though even for us many things were forbidden on Sundays which are now thought not only harmless but right.
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