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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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307 do anything honest she can do,’ answered Diana for me; ‘and you know, St. John, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you.’ ‘I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,’ I answered. ‘Right,’ said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. ‘If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time and way.’ He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my present strength would permit. CHAPTER XXX THE more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time-the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs-all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly-and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom-found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling-to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle- path leading from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-faced lambs:- they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep-on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss, by heathbell, by flower- sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them-so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft |
