At Great Oakhurst she heard everything and took an
interest in it, and she often wished with all her heart that the
subject which occupied Marshall's thoughts was not Chartism but the
draining of that heavy, rush-grown bit of rough pasture that lay at
the bottom of the village. He was very good and kind to her, and she
never imagined, before marriage, that he ought to be more. She was
sure that at Great Oakhurst she would have been quite comfortable
with him but somehow, in London, it was different. 'I don't know how
it is,' she said one day, 'the sort of husband as does for the
country doesn't do for London.'
At Great Oakhurst, where the doors were always open into the yard and
the garden, where every house was merely a covered bit of the open
space, where people were always in and out, and women never sat down,
except to their meals, or to do a little stitching or sewing, it was
really not necessary, as Mrs Caffyn observed, that husband and wife
should 'hit it so fine.' Mrs Marshall hated all the conveniences of
London. She abominated particularly the taps, and longed to be
obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket.
She abominated also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be
compelled--so at least she thought it now--to walk down to the muck-
heap and throw on it what the pig could not eat. Nay, she even
missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree, where the
pig-stye was, for 'you could smell the elder-flowers there in the
spring-time, and the pig-stye wasn't as bad as the stuffy back room
in Great Ormond Street when three or four men were in it.
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