o let; esteeming it a
likely piece of land for his uncle to settle down upon, after a
somewhat unprosperous career of horse-dealing. The farmhouse lay in
the shelter of a very slight green hollow scarcely scooped out of
the pasture field by which it was surrounded; the short crisp turf
came creeping up to the very door and windows, without any attempt
at a yard or garden, or any nearer enclosure of the buildings than
the stone dyke that formed the boundary of the field itself. The
buildings were long and low, in order to avoid the rough violence of
the winds that swept over that wild, bleak spot, both in winter and
summer. It was well for the inhabitants of that house that coal was
extremely cheap; otherwise a southerner might have imagined that
they could never have survived the cutting of the bitter gales that
piped all round, and seemed to seek out every crevice for admission
into the house.

But the interior was warm enough when once you had mounted the long
bleak lane, full of round rough stones, enough to lame any horse
unaccustomed to such roads, and had crossed the field by the little
dry, hard footpath, which tacked about so as to keep from directly
facing the prevailing wind. Mrs. Robson was a Cumberland woman, and
as such, was a cleaner housewife than the farmers' wives of that
north-eastern coast, and was often shocked at their ways, showing it
more by her looks than by her words, for she was not a great talker.
This fastidiousness in such matters made her own house extremely
comfortable, but did not tend to render her popular among her
neighbours. Indeed, Bell Robson piqued herself on her housekeeping
generally, and once in-doors in the gray, bare stone house, there
were plenty of comforts to be had besides cleanliness and warmth.
The great rack of clap-bread hung overhead, and Bell Robson's
preference of this kind of oat-cake over the leavened and partly
sour kind used in Yorkshire was another source of her unpopularity.
Flitches of bacon and 'hands' (_i.e._, shoulders of cured pork, the
legs or hams being sold, as fetching a better price) abounded; and
for any visitor who could stay, neither cream nor finest wheaten
flour was wanting for 'turf cakes' and 'singing hinnies,' with which
it is the delight of the northern housewives to regale the honoured
guest, as he sips their high-priced tea, sweetened with dainty
sugar.

This night farmer Robson was fidgeting in and out of his house-door,
climbing the