BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES.
On the outskirts of the village of Gantick stand two small
semi-detached cottages, coloured with the same pale yellow wash,
their front gardens descending to the high-road in parallel lines,
their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a little
wood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of a
mighty forest. The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen of
white-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took up
my lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of May by my diary);
and at the end of it are two small arbours, set back to back, their
dilapidated sides and roofs bound together by clematis.
The night of my arrival, my landlady asked me to make the least
possible noise in unpacking my portmanteau, because there was trouble
next door, and the partitions were thin. Our neighbour's wife was
down with inflammation, she explained--inflammation of the lungs, as
I learnt by a question or two. It was a bad case. She was a wisht,
ailing soul to begin with. Also the owls in the wood above had been
hooting loudly, for nights past: and yesterday a hedge-sparrow lit on
the sill of the sick-room window, two sure tokens of approaching
death. The sick woman was being nursed by her elder sister, who had
lived in the house for two years, and practically taken charge of it.
"Better the man had married _she_" my landlady added, somewhat
unfeelingly.
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