Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country. "There was _my_ mother first and then _his_, both at us. First _one_ said, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then the _other_, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same. 'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.' Well, we _did_ try, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all living, keep you on your feet." "Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh, thinking of the house she had left.