And Mrs Forbes began to understand him
better.-???Before the week was over, there was not a man or woman about
Howglen whom he did not know even by name; for to his surprise, even
his forgetfulness was fast vanishing in the menstruum of the
earth-spirit, the world's breath blown over the corn. In particular he
had made the acquaintance of James Dow, with whose knowing simplicity
he was greatly taken.
On the last day but one of his intended stay, as he went to make his
daily inquiry, he dropped in to see James Dow in the "harled
hypocrite." James had come in from his work, and was sitting alone on a
bench by the table, in a corner of the earth-floored kitchen. The great
pot, lidless, and full of magnificent potatoes, was hanging above the
fire, that its contents might be quite dry for supper. Through the
little window, a foot and a half square, Cupples could see the remains
of a hawthorn hedge, a hundred years old???-a hedge no longer, but a row
of knobby, gnarled trees, full of knees and elbows; and through the
trees the remains of an orange-coloured sunset.???-It was not a beautiful
country, as I have said before; but the spring was beautiful, and the
heavens were always beautiful; and, like the plainest woman's face, the
country itself, in its best moods, had no end of beauty.
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