Still she did her work and kept her courage.
She took her way into the town with her basket full of the ruby and amber
of the dusky autumn blossoms, and when those failed, and the garden was
quite desolate, except for a promise of haws and of holly, she went, as
she had always done, to the lace-room, and gained her bread and the
chickens' corn each day by winding the thread round the bobbins; and at
nightfall when she had plodded home through the darksome roads and over
the sodden turf, and had lit her rushlight and sat down to her books,
with her hand buried in her hair, and her eyes smarting from the strain
of the lace-work and her heart aching with that new and deadly pain which
never left her now, she would read--read--read--read, and try and store
her brain with knowledge, and try and grasp these vast new meanings of
life that the books opened to her, and try and grow less ignorant against
he should return.
There was much she could not understand,
bait there was also much she could.
Her mind was delicate and quick, her intelligence swift and strong; she
bought old books at bookstalls with pence that she saved by going without
her dinner.
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