England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
They took the little corpse (the little unconscious sacrifice, whose
early calling-home had reclaimed her poor wandering mother) to the hills,
which in her lifetime she had never seen. They dared not lay her by the
stern grandfather in Milne Row churchyard, but they bore her to a lone
moorland graveyard, where, long ago, the Quakers used to bury their dead.
They laid her there on the sunny slope, where the earliest spring flowers
blow.
Will and Susan live at the Upclose Farm. Mrs. Leigh and Lizzie dwell in
a cottage so secluded that, until you drop into the very hollow where it
is placed, you do not see it. Tom is a schoolmaster in Rochdale, and he
and Will help to support their mother. I only know that, if the cottage
be hidden in a green hollow of the hills, every sound of sorrow in the
whole upland is heard there--every call of suffering or of sickness for
help is listened to by a sad, gentle-looking woman, who rarely smiles
(and when she does her smile is more sad than other people's tears), but
who comes out of her seclusion whenever there is a shadow in any
household. Many hearts bless Lizzie Leigh, but she--she prays always and
ever for forgiveness--such forgiveness as may enable her to see her child
once more. Mrs. Leigh is quiet and happy. Lizzie is, to her eyes,
something precious--as the lost piece of silver--found once more. Susan
is the bright one who brings sunshine to all. Children grow around her
and call her blessed. One is called Nanny; her Lizzie often takes to the
sunny graveyard in the uplands, and while the little creature gathers the
daisies, and makes chains, Lizzie sits by a little grave and weeps
bitterly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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