I went up to the door, and opening it stood within the shelter of
the porch for a while, and heard someone reading aloud. Soon I
gathered courage enough to approach the inner door, and look
through its little window into the room. A rousing fire of peats
and dried heather was blazing on the hearth, around which the
family were gathered in a half circle. In an armchair, with a open
book on his knee, sat Carver himself. By his side sat his wife
knitting a stocking, the firelight glinting on her fair hair. Near
to her were a ploughman and a herd boy, also a young woman who did
the light field work on the farm and milked the cows, made butter,
and helped in the house. Tom sat by the fire opposite his father,
and I could see that he was polishing with a piece of leather one
of his silver coins. Thora, whose silken hair and beautiful face I
regarded with greater satisfaction than any other feature of this
group, sat apart from the others, as though she did not care, or
had not been invited, to draw her stool nearer to the warmth.
Carver Kinlay, black bearded and hoarse of voice, was reading aloud
to his family, and seemed to be expecting from them an attention to
the Holy Word which he certainly did not sincerely give to it
himself. When he came to the end of a passage which he considered
required expounding, he would take off his reading spectacles and
wipe them with a corner of his wife's white apron.
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