of hidden feeling, that slowly growing intensity of purpose, which is so
often wiled out of him by the spells of the South.
The distant aspect of Burwood Farm differed in nothing from that of the
few other farmhouses which dotted the fells or clustered beside the
river between it and the rocky end of the valley. But as one came
nearer, certain signs of difference became visible. The garden, instead
of being the old-fashioned medley of phloxes, lavender bushes, monthly
roses, gooseberry trees, herbs, and pampas grass, with which the
farmers' wives of Long Whindale loved to fill their little front
enclosures, was trimly laid down in turf dotted with neat flower-beds,
full at the moment we are writing of with orderly patches of scarlet and
purple anemones, wallflowers, and pansies. At the side of the house a
new bow window, modest enough in dimensions and make, had been thrown
out on to another close-shaven piece of lawn, and by its suggestion of
a distant sophisticated order of things disturbed the homely impression
left by the untouched ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wide
slate window-sills of the front. And evidently the line of sheds
standing level with the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals,
the carts, or the tools which make the small capital of a Westmoreland
farmer. The windows in them were new, the doors fresh painted and
closely shut; curtains of some soft outlandish make showed themselves in
what had once been a stable, and the turf stretched smoothly up to a
narrow gravelled path in front of them, unbroken by a single footmark.
No, evidently the old farm, for such it undoubtedly was, had been but
lately, or comparatively lately, transformed to new and softer uses;
that rough patriarchal life of which it had once been a symbol and
centre no longer bustled and clattered through it. It had become the
shelter of new ideals, the home of another and a milder race than once
possessed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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