Yet something stirred in her like religious bitterness, as she stood in the evening by the Thackbusk gate, with her eyes on the wide fields and the mellow light, and the sore pain pressing its heavy weight on her life. It is not always easy for those who have breadth of knowledge to escape from the point of vision of an individual pain; and the uneducated, with their narrower sympathies, see little clearly beyond the limits of their lives. To poor Jenny life seemed a hard thing at that moment, an irremediable, inexorable doom. ‘The Lord is hard on us working folk, He’s hard,’ a low voice was murmuring within her heart; ‘He knows as we’ve nothing but work an’ trouble left, when He lets there be no comfort in t’ husband or t’ child. T’ rich folk can buy themselves a heap o’ pleasures; I’ve nought but t’ lad an’ lass, an’ they bring grief to me.’ But the gentle nature had only risen for a moment; the echo of rebellion died away immediately into a murmur of the pitiful patience which from her childhood upwards had been the keynote of poor Jenny’s life. ‘I’m stupid--I’ve allays been so,’--she whispered to herself. ‘T’ lad an’ t’ girl would ha’ done well eno’ if they’d had another woman for a mother instead o’ me.’ The pathetic words were just audible in the evening stillness, but there was no one near enough to hear them. For one moment she stood leaning on the gate, looking with sore eyes at the wide fields, the evening light; and then, with a little sigh, she took up her burden of vegetables, and turned away from the gate towards her home. For her daughter might be wanting to have her evening meal; and oh! she must do her best to take care of Annie now. The time might come when she would resent the silence of her daughter, but as yet she could have no feeling towards her but that of a mother’s tenderness--the tenderness which still clings when all else has departed. CHAPTER XXIII ALICE AND TIM MAKE RESOLUTIONS ALL else, however, had not departed yet from the wilful life that seemed openly disgraced--for, although Annie had been found on the door-step in the darkness, there were still true hearts beating with anxiety for her. And of these the truest might have been found that evening at supper together in the kitchen of the Farm--a special supper in honour of the lodger, for Tim had been away, and had returned that night. He sat in the great kitchen, which at this time of the night was shuttered, for always at nine o’clock the house was closed and barred. The ceremony might have been omitted on that evening, for it was a stifling, breathless night, and the closing of the shutters seemed to shut in the heat. But Mr Robson was great on some ceremonies, he had his own notions of forms and propriety.