"You shall all be warm. Don't be afraid of the cold days coming."
He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again, looking up at her
admiringly and chuckling.
"'T'will be a new tale for Stornham village," he cackled. "'T'will be
a new tale. Thank ye, miss. Thank ye."
As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling still
under his breath as he hobbled on his slow way, comforted and elate. How
almost shamefully easy it was; a few loads of coal and faggots here and
there, a few blankets and warm garments whose cost counted for so little
when one's hands were full, could change a gruesome village winter into
a season during which labour-stiffened and broken old things, closing
their cottage doors, could draw their chairs round the hearth and
hover luxuriously over the red glow, which in its comforting fashion of
seeming to have understanding of the dull dreams in old eyes, was more
to be loved than any human friend.
But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to stimulate
realisation of how much she had learned to care for the mere living
among these people, to whom she seemed to have begun to belong, and
whose comfortably lighting faces when they met her showed that they knew
her to be one who might be turned to in any hour of trouble or dismay.
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