Being what she was, it was grand; and made as it was
for penitence, it had in it the essential spirit of saintliness. For
saintliness comes in small things as well as great, and George Herbert's
swept room is a true image. There was saintliness in the docility with
which she rose at six and went to bed at nine; saintliness in the quiet
asceticism with which she ate porridge for breakfast and porridge for
supper--at the first honestly believing it either a joke or an insult,
and that they had given her pigs' food to try her temper; saintliness in
the silence with which she accepted her dinners, maybe a piece of fried
bacon and potatoes, or a huge mess of apple-pudding on washing-days, or
a plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in
the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of
her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings
in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden
over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with
only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that
proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's
familiarity and disorder, the smell of the peat--which was the only fuel
they burnt--reeking through the house, and the utter ugliness and
barren discomfort of everything about, were hourly miseries which she
would once have repudiated with her most cutting scorn; saintliness in
the repression of that self indeed at all four corners, and the resolute
submission to her burden because it was her fitting punishment.
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