r hadn't thought of), separate interests crept in, and her own
children fared before the others; so it came to pass that, however truly
there was a ruling hand at home, and however well the rheumatism got
nursed (for Mary was a good wife in the main), the grown-up son and
daughter felt themselves a little jostled out. Grace, gentle and
submissive, found all her comforts shrunk within the space of her father
and her Bible; Thomas, self-willed and open-hearted, sought his pleasure
any where but at home, and was like to be taking to wrong courses
through domestic bickering: Grace had the dangerous portion, beauty,
added to her lowly lot, and attracted more admiration than her father
wished, or she could understand; while the frank and bold spirit of
Thomas Acton exposed him to the perilous friendship of Ben Burke the
poacher, and divers other questionable characters.

Of these elements, then, are our labourer and his family composed; and
before Roger Acton goes abroad at earliest streak of dawn, we will take
a casual peep within his dwelling. It consists of four bare rubble
walls, enclosing a grouted floor, worn unevenly, and here and there in
holes, and puddly. There were but two rooms in the tenement, one on the
ground, and one over-head; which latter is with no small difficulty got
at by scaling a ladder-like stair-case that fronts the cottage-door.
This upper chamber, the common dormitory, for all but Thomas, who sleeps
down stairs, has a thin partition at one end of it, to screen off the
humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles of
the day; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, and
overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the father
and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shattery
casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of
summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of
wintry nights. A few articles of crockery and some burnished tins
decorate the shelves of the lower apartment; which used to be much
tidier before the children came, and trimmer still when Grace was sole
manager: in a doorless cupboard are apparent sundry coarse edibles, as
the half of a huge unshapely home-made loaf, some white country cheese,
a mass of lumpy pudding, and so forth; beside it, on the window-sill, is
better bread, a well-thumbed Bible, some tracts, and a few odd volumes
picked up cheap at fairs; an old musket (occa