of stock, his tiny paddocks of rye and turnips, his minute methods, his humble, inconspicuous hopes. But, if all these good people do laugh, it is certain also that they respect and like, while as for pity—pity forsooth!—pity is clean out of it. Not another couple in the district is one half so happy. It is not only that, after years of separation, they can be at last together; not only that, after years of dependence on the one side, of rigid scrimping and saving on the other, they are, actually, and oh, wonder of wonders! landowners (Peter is a feudal-hearted Englishman, Catherine cannot conceive that the freehold question may have two sides); it is also the daily duties, toils, trivialities of their present life that they delight in—the daily round, the common task, that fills their every moment with interest, and awakes them fresh every morning to a whole new fortune of zest. Trifles all; but it is the pennies that make the pounds.
Catherine, for example, had eaten baker’s bread and “shop butter” all her life, until she came to Sunshine: now she makes her own, and never thought she could have such an appetite for breakfast! Living in that one little room of hers, with the pot of geranium on the windowsill, how she did use to envy, though always without rancour, the “gentlefolks” their gardens! while now, she can pluck whole posies for herself, of pinks or sweet-williams, red roses or white lilies, as many as she likes; and when, at the heel of autumn, she makes up sweet dark bunches from her violet-bed each time Peter is going into town, she takes less delight in the thought of the easy shillings they are going
