the bushes, and a little girl holding out her apron to receive the sticks with which the crone's skinny arms unsparingly filled it. The child trembled, and seemed half-crying; while the old woman, in a harsh, grating croak, was muttering forth mingled objurgation and complaint.
There was something in the appearance of the latter at once impressive and displeasing; a dark, withered, furrowed skin was drawn like parchment over harsh and aquiline features; the eyes, through the rheum of age, glittered forth black and malignant; and even her stooping posture did not conceal a height greatly above the common stature, though gaunt and shrivelled with years and poverty. It was a form and face that might have recalled at once the celebrated description of Otway, on a part of which we have already unconsciously encroached, and the remaining part of which we shall wholly borrow.
"On her crooked shoulders had she wrapped
The tattered remnants of an old stript hanging,
That served to keep her carcase from the cold,
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched
With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow,
And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness."
