When I went over to her I saw the lamb was dying; its
lips moved incessantly, its little body kept rising and falling with its
laboured breath, now and then it made a violent effort to get up, but
always fell back in the same position. I passed back through the same
field about an hour after. There was the lamb still dying, still
breathing painfully, still moving its lips as before, but the mother,
tired of the spectacle, had walked off, and was calmly munching
mangel-wurzel in another part of the field.
I sentimentalised and moralised--naturally; and naturally, too, I
thought of Catherine. Strange there should be that vein of hardness
running through the entire female sex.
As the rain still continued this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson
she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the
dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to
garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle
successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists
of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part,
built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the
Andersons themselves.
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