She Looked Thirty-Five, But Was Probably Less Than Thirty,
As Women Of Their Class Age Early In This County And Get The Toil-Worn,
Tired Face When Still Young.
By-and-by I went over to her and asked her if she was visiting some of
her people at that spot.
Yes, she returned; her mother and father were
buried under the two grass mounds at her feet; and then quite
cheerfully she went on to tell me all about them - how all their other
children had gone away to live at a distance from home, and she was
left alone with them when they grew old and infirm. They were natives
of the village, and after they were both dead, five years ago, she got
a place at a farm about a mile up the road. There she had been ever
since, but fortunately she had to come to the village every week, and
always on her way back she spent a quarter or half an hour with her
parents. She was sure they looked for that weekly visit from her, as
they had no other relation in the place now, and that they liked to
hear all the village news from her.
All this and more she told me in the most open way. Like Wordsworth's
"simple child," what could she know of death? But being a villager
myself I was better informed than Wordsworth, and didn't enter on a
ponderous argument to prove to her that when people die they die, and
being dead, they can't be alive - therefore to pay them a weekly visit
and tell them all the news was a mere waste of time and breath.
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