Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... 268 CHAPTER IX. EASTER. The sun broke through the bank of fog, and April smiled again. Nothing could be more sweet and gentle than that Easter morning after the wild rain. There were primroses on all the banks; and budding cowslips, pale and stiff of stem but not yet out, lay sprinkled over the home-field at Winterhays. The birds were singing--every one. The gorse shone yellow by the gully-side, and all the valley and the hills looked glad and fresh and green. But if the earth arrayed herself new-clad in honour of the opening spring, so, on this day of the rising again from the dead, did all the people, too. For any soul who did not put on something new on Easter Sunday there could be no luck all the year through. No matter what, a thread or a tag there must be. Even little Hannah Peach had kept back one new pinney out of two, that she sewed after work on the winter evenings, so as to be like the rest. The widow, short of money as she was, had waited for full an hour down at the stile to catch the peddler as he passed and buy herself a new lace. Ursula had a new bodice and handkercher; and Jack, a coat which, as folk said, would come in, as it now turned out, just right for his wedding, too. Only Jacob Handsford, in all the country round, went as he was without change from head to toe. "Ha! there's enough calls upon your purse these days, sure enough," he snarled, "wi'out a-putting your money out o' pocket afore you do need." But he was angry. On pain of paying a shilling to the poor, he had to go to church; and he knew how all the neighbours would peep at him, and then nod and smile one to the other whilst he was forced to sit still and listen to his daughter's banns. So, when the bells rang out, up and down the street from every farm...