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The house was lighted by barn lanterns, hung out of the way under the shingles at the upper ends of the bare, sloping roof-joists, and their dull flames, that leaped and dipped with the moving feet beneath them, shone upon walls clean and bright in a fresh layer of newspapers, and revealed, to whomever cast a look upward, the parcels of herbs, seeds, and sewing thrust here and there in handy crevices of the brown, cobwebbed ceiling.
The whole building, from the pavement to the coping, notched to receive the roof-joists, is of alabaster, plain-white and streaked with ruddy, mauve, and dark bands, whose mottling gives the effect of marble. Perhaps in places the gypsum has been subjected to plutonic action; and we thought that the coloured was preferred to the clear for the bases of the columns.
The weakness of this tale was not apparent to the woman, who I daresay had no practice of such trickery as my friend was the master of, and she put the money carefully in a napkin and in a recess beneath one of the roof-joists. Our thanks she took carelessly, no doubt, because we were Campbells.
But when I had heard of the village cows, which used to be turned out to graze on the heaths, and had been told how fir-timber fit for cottage roof-joists could be cut on the common, as well as heath good enough for thatching and turf excellent for firing; and when to this was added the talk of bread-ovens at half the old cottages, and of little corn-crops in the gardens, and of brewing and wine-making and bee-keeping; I understood at last that my elderly neighbours had seen with their own eyes what I should never see namely, the old rustic economy of the English peasantry.