‘My heart aches for them poor motherless children,’ said Mrs. Hackit to her husband, ‘a-going among strangers, and into a nasty town, where there’s no good victuals3 to be had, and you must pay dear to get bad uns.’
Mrs. Hackit had a vague notion of a town life as a combination of dirty backyards, measly pork, and dingy4 linen5.
The same sort of sympathy was strong among the poorer class of parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr. Tozer, who was still able to earn a little by gardening ‘jobs’, stopped Mrs. Cramp6, the charwoman, on her way home from the Vicarage, where she had been helping7 Nanny to pack up the day before the departure, and inquired very particularly into Mr. Barton’s prospects8.
‘Ah, poor mon,’ he was heard to say, ‘I’m sorry for un. He hedn’t much here, but he’ll be wuss off theer. Half a loaf’s better nor ne’er un.’
The sad good-byes had all been said before that last evening; and after all the packing was done and all the arrangements were made, Amos felt the oppression of that blank interval9 in which one has nothing left to think of but the dreary10 future—the separation from the loved and familiar, and the chilling entrance on the new and strange. In every parting there is an image of death.
Soon after ten o’clock, when he had sent Nanny to bed, that she might have a good night’s rest before the
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