“I mind ye said so and so,” she says, “an’ it’s often seemed to comfort me.”

Clearly there is nothing for it but immediately to say it again, and you are rewarded by seeing the face brighten perceptibly, much as a child’s brightens as it hears a well—­known point in a familiar tale.  These simple people are very like children.

But sometimes the pain is too great to be dilated on, and then a chance phrase or word, infinitely pathetic, betrays the depth of sorrow; sometimes there is silence more pathetic still.

Looking into a cottage, one day, where the week before a little child had been carried to the churchyard, I found the mother hard at work, ironing.

“I will not come in,” I said.  “You are busy.”

“Nay, ma’am, coom your ways in an’ sit ye down.  There’s no hurry.  I’m nobbut puttin’ away our Teddy’s little clothes.”

Not another word did she say in allusion to her sorrow, and no tears fell on the little worn garments.  Poor little garments, so pathetically bringing to mind the wee lost personality!  Darned socks which had covered active little feet; tiny short “knickers” patched at the knees; shabby coat—­moulded, it would seem, into the very shape of the chubby figure—­the mother ironed and polished them, and laid them in a tidy heap.  As she worked she tried to talk of other things, but her face told its own tale, and I went away with an aching heart.

The men carry their troubles afield; manual labour dulls, if it does not altogether exorcise, them; some have other less creditable means of seeking oblivion.  But the poor women, shut in in their little houses, with their anxieties and sorrow staring them in the face—­God help them!  So narrow are their lives, so few their experiences, that their thoughts must run perpetually in the same groove; everything which surrounds them, their “sticks” of furniture, their little household gods, are reminders of lost joys and present grief.

“Eh, I can scarce ’bide to see my mother’s cheer,” said a poor crippled girl to me.  “Her ‘an me was allus sat one aside o’ t’other, an’ now hoo’s gone.  Eh, I know I shouldn’t complain, an’ hoo’s in a better place; but hoo’s gone, ye see, an’ I’m awful lonely.  I keep settin’ here all day, an’ thinkin’ of her, and fancyin’ I hear her moanin’.  Eh dear, yes, it’s a shame for me, an’ I know I ought to be glad hoo isn’t sufferin’ no longer.  Eh, at th’ last, ye know, Mrs. Francis, it were summat awful what hoo suffered.  Oh yes, I know.  But, ye see, when I’m sat here all day by mysel’, an’ when I see th’ empty cheer, an’ o’ neets when I dream hoo’s layin’ aside o’ me, an’ then wakken up an’ stretch out my arms—­eh, dear o’ me!”