ragged her weary steps to our kitchen, and sat herself down, baby, in
lap, on the upturned tub or flag-bottomed chair that I dusted off with
my apron, it was to commence the querulous complaint of the last week's
chill or the heavy washing of the day before, the ailing baby or the
troublesome child, all told in the same whining voice. Even the choice
bit of gossip which roused us at rare intervals always had its dark
side, on which these poor women dwelt with a perverse pleasure.

In short, life was too hard for them; it brought its constant cares
without any alleviating pleasures. Their homes were only places of
monotonous labor,--their husbands so many hard taskmasters, who exacted
from them more than their strength could give,--their children, who
should have been the delight of their mothers' hearts, so many
additional burdens, the bearing and nursing of which broke down their
poor remaining health; the glorious and lavish Nature in which they
lived only brought to them added labor, and shut them out from the few
social enjoyments that they knew of.

I was old enough to feel all this,--not to reason on it as I can now,
but to rebel against it with all the violence of a vehement nature which
feels its strength only in the injuries it inflicts upon itself in its
useless struggles for freedom. Bitter tears did I shed sometimes, as I
lay with my head on my arms, leaning on that narrow window-sill,--tears
of passionate regret that I was not a boy, a man, that I might, by the
very force of my right arm, hew my way out of that encircling forest
into the world of which I dreamed,--tears, too, that, being as I was,
only an ugly, ignorant girl, I could not be allowed to care only for
myself, and dream away my life in this same forest, which charmed me
while it hemmed me in. My rude, chaotic nature had something of force in
it, strength which I knew would stand me in good stead, could I ever
find an outlet for it; it had also a power of enjoyment, keen, vivid,
could I ever get leave to enjoy.

At length came the opening, the glimpse of sunlight. I remember, as if
it were but yesterday, that afternoon which first showed to my physical
sight something of that full life of which my imagination had framed a
rude, faint sketch. I was standing at the end of the meadow, just where
the rails had been thrown down for the cows, when, looking up the path
that led through the wood by the river, I saw, almost at my side, a man
on horseba