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Updated: May 28, 2025
"Tom, go to th' shippon, and supper the cows. I want to speak to mother alone." When he entered the house-place, she was sitting before the fire, looking into its embers. She did not hear him come in: for some time she had lost her quick perception of outward things. "Mother! what's this about going to Manchester?" asked he.
The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon.
It was, comparatively speaking, as much so as West Derby, or any of the neighbouring villages round Liverpool, are at present. The farm-house in which we resided has long since been swept away, with its barns, its piggery, and its shippon. Never more will its cornricks gladden the eye never more will busy agricultural life be carried on in its precincts.
Buxton to follow her. She left the house-door open for his entrance, and passed out again through the kitchen into the space behind, which was partly an uninclosed yard, and partly rocky common. She ran across the little green to the shippon, and mounted the ladder into the dimly-lighted loft. Up in a dark corner Edward stood, with an old rake in his hand.
"DEAR SIR, Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me. First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me, when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came out from the shippon to see what was the matter.
The gutter on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water lying green between the cobble-stones of the path. Nothing could be done in the garden. The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow's market. The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.
A stone-seated porch, white-washed inside, shaded the entrance; and there was a little barn and a shippon, or cow-house attached. By the by, that word "shippon," must have been originally "sheep-pen." The house nestled deep in the clough, upon a shelf of green land, near the moorland stream.
Inside the quadrangle, for the place had during the past century served as farm instead of hall, barn, cart-shed and shippon were ruinous and empty, but she could fill the space in fancy with sturdy archer, man-at-arms, and corsleted rider, for that the present venerable edifice had been built into an older one the stump of a square tower remained to testify.
Willie rode the horses down to water; Willie helped him to chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at her work, hearing an indistinct but cheerful conversation going on in the shippon, while the cows were being milked. She almost felt irritated with her little brother, as if he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the very battle that she was fighting in his cause.
At the top of the slope she asked him to wait while she ran down and told the result of her conversation with him. Her mother was alone, looking white and sick. She told her that Edward had gone into the hay-loft, above the old, disused shippon. Maggie related the substance of her interview with Mr. Buxton, and his wish that Edward should go to America. "To America!" said Mrs. Browne.
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