, but was
related closely to what the men were doing out of doors, and harmonized
with the general industry of her people. She may be figured, almost, as
the member of a tribe whose doings explained all her own doings, and to
whose immemorial customs her scrubbing and washing belonged, not
unworthily. Her conscience was in the work. From one thing to another
she went, now busily at a pleasant task, now doggedly at a wearisome
one, and she knew no leisure; but at every point she was supported by
what we may call the traditional feeling of the valley--nay, of the
whole countryside--commending her perhaps; at any rate, fully
understanding her position. To be like her mother and her grandmother;
to practise the time-honoured habits, and to practise them efficiently,
was a sort of religious cult with her, in the same way as it is nowadays
with women of a certain position not to be dowdy. The peasant-cottager's
wife could never think of herself as a mere charwoman or washerwoman;
she had no such ignoble career. She was Mrs. This, or Dame That, with a
recognized place in the village; and all the village traditions were her
possession. The arts of her people--the flower-gardening, the songs and
old sayings and superstitions, the customs of Harvest-time and
Christmas--were hers as much as anybody's; if the stress of work kept
her from partaking in them, still she was not shut out from them by
reason of any social inferiority. And so we come back to the point at
issue. House-drudgery might fill the peasant woman's days and years, and
yet there was more belonging to it. It was the core of a fruit: the
skeleton of something that was full of warm life. A larger existence
wrapped it in, and on the whole a kindlier one.

In view of all this it is easy to see why the house-duties can no
longer be approached in the old temper, or yield their former
satisfaction while they are being done. The larger existence has been
stripped away from them. They do not lead up to happier, more
interesting, duties; they are not preparatory to pleasantness. The
washing and scrubbing, the very cooking and needlework, are but so much
trouble awaiting a woman when she gets up in the morning and when she
comes home tired at night; they spoil the leisure that wage-earning
should win, and they are undertaken, not with the idea of getting on to
something productive, something that would make the cottage a more
prosperous home, but solely to keep it from degener