Common Sense Volume 8; A Monthly Magazine for Everybody, to Promote Social, Moral and Intellectual Progress (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...pigs rooted about amongst the hens and chickens on that allimportant spot, upon which depended the prosperity or failure of next year's crops, the manure heap. The house itself was a grey-stone, two-storied building, and inside as well as out it showed the same signs of care and comfort. The life of the inhabitants was evidently lived chiefly in the back premises; the wide airy kitchen had a more homelike air than the stiffly-furnished parlour, the sunny yard was more attractive than the straight, shrub-bordered approach, though in the spring and summer, when the walls were covered with creepers and the flowers bloomed gaily through the grass, the front of the house only wanted windows thrown widely open and merry childish voices to make it as sweet a spot as heart could wish for. So thought the master as he rode slowly away, and a curious half-sad, half-expectant light shone in his honest grey eyes. "Ten years," he murmured to himself. "Ten years is a long time. I wonder if she will have changed, as we two have done--the old home and I." Ten years ago he had come back from the distant school where, much against his will, he had been sent to finish his education, to the old father and mother, whose joy and pride he was. He had left them alone together, but now he found a new inmate in the farmhouse. He was but a boy; she, though his senior by but a few years, was an old woman in wordly wisdom; to his young eyes she was the ideal of all that was fair and lady-like. To her, he was the only admirer at hand, and his devotion was an amusement and an excitement: the only excitement in the dull, dreary country which she hated with all her heart, and where she stayed only because she was penniless, and homeless but for the kind shelter which she...