The two men thanked me, however, artlessly, naively,
and seemed about to initiate me into the secret of their distress,
when the cottage door by which we were standing opened, and a woman
with an anxious, inquiring expression on her face came out to meet us.
She was old, being perhaps fifty-five years of age, but Time had dealt
less harshly with her features than Grief, and the wrinkles which
furrowed her cheeks and contracted her forehead into thin, shriveled
folds showed less the footprints of departed seasons than the marks of
that hard iron hand of Sorrow whose least touches sear more surely
than fire. Her hair was white as spun-glass, and neatly confined under
one of those high Norman caps of which the long starched frills,
encircling the face, lend a cold, severe expression to the wearer: her
gait was stooping, her steps feeble, and her whole appearance denoted
lassitude and weakness. She was, as I guessed, the wife of the elder
and the mother of the younger of my companions; and the glance she
threw at these when she saw them told as plainly as the language of a
wife's and mother's eyes can tell what a large and willing share she
claimed of all their trials.
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