The Widowed Bride — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WIDOWED BRIDE, — 33 ‘“Never set eyes on “em,” was the brusque reply. 6Then how——” began Rena, in great perplexity, but the gipsy interrupted her with a good-humored laugh. ‘Wait and see,” she said, ‘‘and mind ye keep a close _tongue in your head.” She advanced boldly up to the wicket-gate of a farm yard, where, through comfortable looking stacks of hay, and substantial barns and out-buildings, one could just catch, -here and there, a glimpse of a low-eaved house, sur- mounted by lilac bushes and currant hedges. ‘Whisht! whisht!’she said, ‘‘there’s nothing to be afeard on,” as Alice woke with acry and start at the uproarious barking of two or three mongrel curs, who rushed tumultu- ously to the gate, at the sound of strange footsteps, thereby arousing the deep baying of a larger dog, or mastiff, chained to his kennel farther in. : “Hush, Tige! down Snap!” exclaimed acheery voice, and a buxom girl, of sixteen or seventeen, came out of the eastern door. ‘‘Who’s there, and what is it you want?” “Naught on earth but the bit and the sup ye'll never miss, my bonny lady,” the woman began, in insinuating accents; ‘‘a crust o’ bread and a cup o’ milk for the chil- dren.” The farmer’s daughter, for such she was, looked compas- sionately upon the wearled little creatures. «‘Are they yours?” she asked. ‘That they be, miss,” the woman answered, with smooth, ready falsehood; ‘and their father’s been dead these two year, come next “Michaelmas, and a hard row it is for a lone woman to be feedin’ for both of “em, for ri “Wait a minute,” said the girl, ‘‘and J’ll bring you some- thing, or, maybe you’d better come in the kitchen, and sit by the fire—the morning air is a bit chilly yet.” The woman, with a profusion of thanks. followed her young guide into a large, low-ceiled room, with a great, cheerful fire at one end of it, and the transverse beams, huge and smoke blackened, hung with hams, flitches of streaky bacon, and strings of onions, dried apples, and herbs. A single window at. the sonth end, vailed with vine leaves, admitted zig-zag bars of sunshine, and a caged lin- net was singing uproariously in the morning light. “Oh, what a nice place!” whispered Alice. ‘‘I should like to stay here always; shouldn’t you, Rena?” €oO com chooks