| Title | : | Two Secrets and A Man of His Word |
|---|---|---|
| Author | : | Hesba Stretton |
| Release | : | 2025-03-09 |
| Kind | : | ebook |
| Genre | : | Action & Adventure, Books, Fiction & Literature, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction |
| Size | : | 1519205 |
| ABOUT a stone's throw from the last house in the small country town of Armitage stood a cottage which had scarcely changed in aspect since it had been built two hundred years ago. The gambrel roof was high-pitched and closely thatched, with deep eaves, under which the swallows built their nests; the little elbow in the slope of the gable gave it a quaint look, as if the cottage had drawn a hood over its head. Along the top of the roof grew a row of purple flags, which contrasted well with the brown thatch and golden lichens. Casements, with small diamond windows, glistened in the light. A garden full of old-fashioned flowers ran down from the road to the little porch, which sheltered the door from rough weather, and made a pleasant and shady seat in the summer. It was certainly the most picturesque dwelling in the neighbourhood. "What is the name of your cottage?" asked an artist, who had just finished a sketch of it. "Oh! It hasn't any name, sir," answered Joanna Terry—"it's nothing; only our home." She had been born there, and had not been away from it for a whole week at a time for fifty-five years. She hardly knew any other house. The ground floor of the cottage contained a large, old-fashioned living-room, with two very small ones opening out of it, one of which was a kind of scullery, and the other the bedroom in which she had been born, and where she had slept all her life. Under the gable of the thatched roof there was a large attic covering the whole area of the cottage, with sloping ceiling and two windows, one at each end, looking east and west. Joanna's mind could not grasp the idea of any improvement in the arrangement of her little homestead. The tall, spare old woman was still very active and alert, with an eye keen to detect every weed venturing to grow in the garden, and every speck of dust that might blow in through the open window and door. Scarcely a bud opened on the roses and clematis climbing up the half-timber wall without her notice. The hollyhocks and sunflowers, standing as erect as herself, were every one known to her. The potato-patch behind the cottage, which her husband, Amos Terry, cultivated in his leisure time; the long rows of peas and beans; the beds of onions and lettuce; the fruit-trees which paid their rent—they were almost like children to her. Indoors, the old oak settle by the fireside, the oak table and dresser, all shining with the active work of her own hands, teemed with associations and memories which formed the sum and substance of her life. The roof-tree was not more planted to the spot than Joanna was. Still more firmly rooted there, if possible, was her only child, Charlotte, who lived in the pleasant attic under the roof. She was lame, and an invalid from a spinal complaint, the result of a fall when she was a little child. It was very seldom that she felt well enough to creep painfully down the rude staircase to the ground floor. But from her two windows her eye could overlook both of the garden patches lying before and behind the house; and she knew everything growing in them as well as her mother did. Eastward her view was bounded by a low ridge of hill, above which the morning clouds hung tinged with lovely hues some time before the sun showed itself over the wooded outline. To the west there was a wide stretch of undulating land, with meadows and coppices and scattered cottages, ending far-off in a glimpse of the sea, which often glittered like gold under the setting of the sun. Charlotte seldom missed seeing both sunrise and sunset. She was thirty years of age now, pallid and emaciated, with the pathetic look in her eyes which cripples and deformed people so often have. She looked almost as old as her mother. The mother and daughter had been slowly changing places for the last fifteen years. Charlotte was the adviser now, the head of the little household, the referee to whom every question was brought. She was always brooding over schemes for her father and mother's comfort, and suggesting gently what their actions should be from day to day. Joanna was still young in spirit, apt to act impetuously; occasionally giving way to almost girlish fits of temper, which she confessed and repented of by Charlotte's bedside. It did not seem possible there could ever come a secret between these two. |
![Pilgrim Street. A story of Manchester life. By the author of “Jessica's First Prayer” [i.e. Sarah Smith writing under the pseudonym of Hesba Stretton], etc.](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Publication/48/30/5f/mzi.zroeklvg.jpg/300x300bb.jpg)
![The Doctor's Dilemma. [A novel.] Vol. III.](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Publication/v4/20/39/57/203957e1-8999-b77c-e2c9-492c5dcf47d8/9780699517492_cover.jpg/300x300bb.jpg)
![The Soul of Honour. [A tale.]](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Publication/02/19/0d/mzi.hmufnjlj.jpg/300x300bb.jpg)
