Even if Mrs.Whitelaw had been fond of reading, and she only cared moderately for that form of occupation, she could hardly have found intellectual diversion of that kind at Wyncomb, where a family Bible, a few volumes of the _Annual Register_, which had belonged to some half-dozen different owners before they came from a stall in Malsham market to the house of Whitelaw, a grim-looking old quarto upon domestic medicine, and a cookery-book, formed the entire library.

When the duties of the day were done, and the local weekly newspaper had been read--an intellectual refreshment which might be fairly exhausted in ten minutes--there remained nothing to beguile the hours but the perpetual stitch--stitch--stitch of an industriously-disposed sempstress; and the two women used to sit throughout the long afternoons with their work-baskets before them, talking a little now and then of the most commonplace matters, but for the greater part of their time silent.
Sometimes, when the heavy burden of Mrs.Tadman's society, and the clicking of needles and snipping of scissors, grew almost unendurable, Ellen would run out of the house for a brief airing in the garden, and walk briskly to and fro along the narrow pathway between the potatoes and cabbages, thinking of her dismal life, and of the old days at the Grange when she had been full of gaiety and hope.

There was not perhaps much outward difference in the two lives.

In her father's house she had worked as hard as she worked now; but she had been free in those days, and the unknown future all before her, with its chances of happiness.

Now, she felt like some captive who paces the narrow bounds of his prison-yard, without hope of release or respite, except in death.
This particular spring day had begun brightly, the morning had been sunny and even warm; but now, as the afternoon wore away, there were dark clouds, with a rising wind and a sharp gusty shower every now and then.
Ellen took a solitary turn in the garden between the showers.