a little old cottage, which seemed to consist
chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings
behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town.
Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the
influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in
front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a
cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got
down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since
the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a
screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There
were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger
carnations or picotees, asters or arums.

It was about five o'clock in the March afternoon, when Mary ushered John
Hammond into Mr. Barlow's dwelling, and, in the dim glow of a cheery
little fire and the faint light that filtered through the screen of
geranium leaves, the visitor looked for a moment or so doubtfully at the
owner of the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and
apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the
strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr. Barlow was toothless and
nut-cracker like of outline; he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the
burden of long years, but his healthy visage had none of those deep
lines, those cross markings and hollows which made the pallid
countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract
idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of a Hogarth.

'I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam,' said Mary. 'He
fancied he met you on the Fell the other morning.'

Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the
idea of his having got so far as the Fell.

'With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall
never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall
hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass
over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.
But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the
bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for some one dropping in to have
a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody
in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.
Lord bless you, I do look forwa