The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was
awaiting them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at
their legs in a hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a
tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a
sharp bark again, as much as to say, 'I have done my duty by this
feeble creature, you perceive'; while the lady-mother of the kitten
sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a
sleepy air of expecting caresses, though she was not going to take any
trouble for them.
The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change
which had come over this interior of the stone cottage. There was no
bed now in the living-room, and the small space was well filled with
decent furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly
Winthrop's eye. The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were
hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come,
with the beds and other things, from the Red House; for Mr Godfrey
Cass, as everyone said in the village, did very kindly by the
weaver; and it was nothing but right a man should be looked on and
helped by those who could afford it, when he had brought up an
orphan child, and been father and mother to her- and had lost his
money too, so as he had nothing but what he worked for week by week,
and when the weaving was going down too- for there was less and less
flax spun- and Master Marner was none so young.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213