The Ordeal

It was the afternoon of an April day in that same year, and the sky
was blue above, with little sailing white clouds catching the
pleasant sunlight. The earth in that northern country had scarcely
yet put on her robe of green. The few trees grew near brooks running
down from the moors and the higher ground. The air was full of
pleasant sounds prophesying of the coming summer. The rush, and
murmur, and tinkle of the hidden watercourses; the song of the lark
poised high up in the sunny air; the bleat of the lambs calling to
their mothers--everything inanimate was full of hope and gladness.

For the first time for a mournful month the front door of
Haytersbank Farm was open; the warm spring air might enter, and
displace the sad dark gloom, if it could. There was a newly-lighted
fire in the unused grate; and Kester was in the kitchen, with his
clogs off his feet, so as not to dirty the spotless floor, stirring
here and there, and trying in his awkward way to make things look
home-like and cheerful. He had brought in some wild daffodils which
he had been to seek in the dawn, and he placed them in a jug on the
dresser. Dolly Reid, the woman who had come to help Sylvia during
her mother's illness a year ago, was attending to something in the
back-kitchen, making a noise among the milk-cans, and singing a
ballad to herself as she worked; yet every now and then she checked
herself in her singing, as if a sudden recollection came upon her
that this was neither the time nor the place for songs. Once or
twice she took up the funeral psalm which is sung by the bearers of
the body in that country-Our God, our help in ages past.