We preferred both, and we sat down in that pleasant
parlor-kitchen, and listened, till the tea-cake came out of the
oven and was split open and buttered smoking hot, to a flow of
delightful and instructive talk. For our refection we paid
sixpence each, but for our edification we are still, and hope
ever to be, in debt. Our hostess was of a most cheerful
philosophy, such as could not be bought of most modern
philosophers for money. The flour for our tea-cakes, she said,
was a shilling fivepence a stone, "And not too much for growing
and grinding it, and all." Every week-day morning she rose at
half-past four, and got breakfast for her boys, who then rode
their bicycles, or, in the snow, walked, all the miles of our
voyage into York, where they worked in the railway shops. No,
they did not belong to any union; the railway men did not seem to
care for it; only a "benefit union."
She kept the house for her family, and herself ready to answer
every hail from the steamer; but in her mellow English content,
which was not stupid or sodden, but clever and wise, it was as if
it were she, rather than the archbishop, whose nature expressed
itself in a motto on one of the palace walls, "Blessed be the
Lord who loadeth us with blessings every day.
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