It was in the midst of
this shower, that a tall gaunt female, covered with a ragged cloak, and
having one child slung on her back, and another much older in her hand,
presented herself at the door of the shed, and speaking in a broad
northern dialect, asked permission to shelter herself and her bairns,
for a little space in the corner of the hut. Neither Dymock nor the
young man paid her any regard, or seemed to see her, but Shanty made her
welcome, and pointing to a bench which was within the glow of the fire
of the forge, though out of harm's way of sparks or strokes, the woman
came in, and having with the expertness of long use, slung the child
from her back into her arms, she sate down, laying the little one across
her knee, whilst the eldest of the two children dropped on the bare
earth with which the shed was floored, and began nibbling a huge crust
which the mother put into his hand.
In the meantime, work went on as before the woman had come in, nor was a
word spoken, till Shanty, looking up from the horse-shoe which he was
hammering, remarked in his own mind, that he wondered that the little
one stretched on the woman's knee, was not awakened and frightened by
the noise of the forge; but there the creature lies, he thought, as if
it had neither sense or hearing.
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