Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot
to hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which
wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to
every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the
dark leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount
to the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief
work were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he
supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and
sixpences to spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he
would not change the silver- the crowns and half-crowns that were
his own earnings, begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread
them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them
and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline
between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas
that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they had
been unborn children- thought of the guineas that were coming slowly
through the coming years, through all his life, which spread far
away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving. No
wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he
made his journeys through the fields and the lanes to fetch and
carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the
hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of the once familiar herbs:
these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away,
like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its
old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for
itself in the barren sand.
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