they had given her pigs' food to try her temper; saintliness in
the silence with which she accepted her dinners, maybe a piece of fried
bacon and potatoes, or a huge mess of apple-pudding on washing-days, or
a plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in
the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of
her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings
in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden
over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with
only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that
proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's
familiarity and disorder, the smell of the peat--which was the only fuel
they burnt--reeking through the house, and the utter ugliness and
barren discomfort of everything about, were hourly miseries which she
would once have repudiated with her most cutting scorn; saintliness in
the repression of that self indeed at all four corners, and the resolute
submission to her burden because it was her fitting punishment.

So the sad days wore on, and the fell-side air had not yet brisked up
Emmanuel's adopted daughter as his sister prophesied. Indeed, she seemed
slighter and paler than ever, and if possible more submissive to her lot
and more taciturn. And as her intense quietude of bearing suited Miss
Gryce, who could not bear to be fussed, and time proved her douce and
not fashious, she became quite a favorite with her rough-grained
hostess, who wondered more and more where Emmanuel had picked her up,
and whose bairn she really was.

Her only pleasure was in wandering over the fells, whence she could see
the tops of the Derwentwater mountains, and from some points a glimpse
of blue Bassanthwaite flowing out into the open; where mountain-tarns,
lying like silver plates in the purple distance, were her magic shows,
seen only in certain lights, and more often lost than found; whence she
could look over the broad Carlisle plain and dream of that day on the
North Aston moor when she first met Edgar Harrowby; and whence the
glittering strip of the Solway against the horizon made her yearn to be
in one of the ships which she could dimly discern passing up and down,
so that she might leave England for ever and lay down the burden of her
life and her sorrow in mamma's dear land.

So the hours passed, dreary as Mariana's, and hopeless as tho