either. They would have to pick up
what learning they could like chickens pecking for grain—a little at school, more
from books, and some by dipping into the store of others.
Sometimes, later, when they read about children whose lives
were very different from their own, children who had nurseries with
rocking-horses and went to parties and for sea-side holidays and were
encouraged to do and praised for doing just those things they themselves were
thought odd for, they wondered why they had alighted at birth upon such an unpromising
spot as Lark Rise.
That was indoors. Outside there was plenty to see and hear
and learn, for the hamlet people were interesting, and almost every one of them
interesting in some different way to the others, and to Laura the old people
were the most interesting of all, for they told her about the old times and
could sing old songs and remember old customs, although they could never
remember enough to satisfy her. She sometimes wished she could make the earth
and stones speak and tell her about all the dead people who had trodden upon
them. She was fond of collecting stones of all shapes and colours, and for
years played with the idea that, one day, she would touch a secret spring and a
stone would fly open and reveal a parchment which would tell her exactly what
the world was like when it was written and placed there.
There were no bought pleasures, and, if there had been, there
was no money to pay for them; but there were the sights, sounds and scents of the
different seasons: spring with its fields of young wheat-blades bending in the
wind as the cloud-shadows swept over them; summer with its ripening grain and
its flowers and fruit and its thunderstorms, and how the thunder growled and
rattled over that flat land and what boiling, sizzling downpours it brought!
With August came the harvest and the fields settled down to the long winter
rest, when the snow was often piled high and frozen, so that the buried hedges
could be walked over, and strange birds came for crumbs to the cottage doors
and hares in search of food left their spoor round the pigsties.
The children at the end house had their own private
amusements, such as guarding the clump of white violets they found blooming in
a cleft of the brook bank and called their 'holy secret', or pretending the scabious,
which bloomed in abundance there, had fallen in a shower from the mid-summer
sky, which was exactly the same dim, dreamy blue. Another favourite game was to
creep silently up behind birds which had perched on a rail or twig and try to
touch their tails. Laura once succeeded in this, but she was alone at the time
and nobody believed she had done it.
A little later, remembering man's earthy origin, 'dust thou
art and to dust thou shalt return', they liked to fancy themselves bubbles of earth.
When alone in the fields, with no one to see them, they would hop, skip and
jump, touching the ground as lightly as possible and crying 'We are bubbles of
earth! Bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth!'
But although they had these private fancies, unknown to their
elders, they did not grow into the ultra-sensitive, misunderstood, and thwarted
adolescents who, according to present-day writers, were a feature of that era.
Perhaps, being of mixed birth with a large proportion of peasant blood in them,
they were tougher in fibre than some. When their bottoms were soundly smacked,
as they often were, their reaction was to make a mental note not to repeat the
offence which had caused the smacking, rather than to lay up for themselves
complexes to spoil their later lives; and when Laura, at about twelve years
old, stumbled into a rickyard where a bull was in the act of justifying its
existence, the sight did not warp her nature. She neither peeped from behind a
rick, nor fled, horrified, across country; but merely thought in her old-fashioned
way, 'Dear me! I had better slip quietly away before the men see me.' The bull
to her was but a bull performing
what learning they could like chickens pecking for grain—a little at school, more
from books, and some by dipping into the store of others.
Sometimes, later, when they read about children whose lives
were very different from their own, children who had nurseries with
rocking-horses and went to parties and for sea-side holidays and were
encouraged to do and praised for doing just those things they themselves were
thought odd for, they wondered why they had alighted at birth upon such an unpromising
spot as Lark Rise.
That was indoors. Outside there was plenty to see and hear
and learn, for the hamlet people were interesting, and almost every one of them
interesting in some different way to the others, and to Laura the old people
were the most interesting of all, for they told her about the old times and
could sing old songs and remember old customs, although they could never
remember enough to satisfy her. She sometimes wished she could make the earth
and stones speak and tell her about all the dead people who had trodden upon
them. She was fond of collecting stones of all shapes and colours, and for
years played with the idea that, one day, she would touch a secret spring and a
stone would fly open and reveal a parchment which would tell her exactly what
the world was like when it was written and placed there.
There were no bought pleasures, and, if there had been, there
was no money to pay for them; but there were the sights, sounds and scents of the
different seasons: spring with its fields of young wheat-blades bending in the
wind as the cloud-shadows swept over them; summer with its ripening grain and
its flowers and fruit and its thunderstorms, and how the thunder growled and
rattled over that flat land and what boiling, sizzling downpours it brought!
With August came the harvest and the fields settled down to the long winter
rest, when the snow was often piled high and frozen, so that the buried hedges
could be walked over, and strange birds came for crumbs to the cottage doors
and hares in search of food left their spoor round the pigsties.
The children at the end house had their own private
amusements, such as guarding the clump of white violets they found blooming in
a cleft of the brook bank and called their 'holy secret', or pretending the scabious,
which bloomed in abundance there, had fallen in a shower from the mid-summer
sky, which was exactly the same dim, dreamy blue. Another favourite game was to
creep silently up behind birds which had perched on a rail or twig and try to
touch their tails. Laura once succeeded in this, but she was alone at the time
and nobody believed she had done it.
A little later, remembering man's earthy origin, 'dust thou
art and to dust thou shalt return', they liked to fancy themselves bubbles of earth.
When alone in the fields, with no one to see them, they would hop, skip and
jump, touching the ground as lightly as possible and crying 'We are bubbles of
earth! Bubbles of earth! Bubbles of earth!'
But although they had these private fancies, unknown to their
elders, they did not grow into the ultra-sensitive, misunderstood, and thwarted
adolescents who, according to present-day writers, were a feature of that era.
Perhaps, being of mixed birth with a large proportion of peasant blood in them,
they were tougher in fibre than some. When their bottoms were soundly smacked,
as they often were, their reaction was to make a mental note not to repeat the
offence which had caused the smacking, rather than to lay up for themselves
complexes to spoil their later lives; and when Laura, at about twelve years
old, stumbled into a rickyard where a bull was in the act of justifying its
existence, the sight did not warp her nature. She neither peeped from behind a
rick, nor fled, horrified, across country; but merely thought in her old-fashioned
way, 'Dear me! I had better slip quietly away before the men see me.' The bull
to her was but a bull performing
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