She had a fancy to look at the familiar old plane again--the
quiet village street, with its three or four primitive shops, and single
inn lying back a little from the road, and with a flock of pigeons and
other feathered creatures always on the patch of grass before it; the low
white-walled cottages, in which there were only friendly faces for her.
That suggestion of a foreign home had made her native village newly dear to
her.
She had not held much intercourse with these Arden people since her coming
home. The sense of her inability to help them in any substantial way had
kept her aloof from them. She had not the gift of preaching, or of laying
down the laws of domestic economy, whereby she might have made counsel
and admonition serve instead of gold or silver. Being able to give them
nothing, she felt herself better out of the way; but there were two
or three households upon which she had contrived to bestow some small
benefits--a little packet of grocery bought with her scanty pocket-money,
a jar of good soup that she had coaxed good-natured Martha to make, and so
on--and in which her visits had been very welcome.
All was very quiet this evening. Clarissa went through the village without
meeting any one she knew. The gate of the churchyard stood open, and Arden
churchyard was a favourite spot with Clarissa. A solemn old place, shadowed
by funereal yews and spreading cedars, which must have been trees of some
importance before the Hanoverian succession.
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