The sun was beginning to beat down on their heads, when they reached the little hamlet of River.
It consisted of one chalk road, on either side of which were very white cottages, which had a deceptive air of comfort and prettiness. Pink china roses clustered against their walls, and low-thatched roofs shone gold in the morning light.
The villagers were out in the fields: only one old man, and a baby with sore eyes and an eruption all over its face, stared open-mouthed at the oddly matched pair. Barnabas stooped to pass through the doorway of one of the cottages; and Meg following him would have tumbled down the one step into the room, if he had not held out his hand to save her.
She never forgot the sudden plunge out of sunshine into that dark room, close and hot, and yet with a damp smell about it.
Labourers' cottages sixty years ago were so bad that one wonders, when one thinks of them, that the wave of revolution that was passing over Europe, did not utterly submerge us too!
Meg stood leaning against the door, watching the preacher; too shy to venture further. Her eyes dilated, and she turned whiter as she looked. The damp clay floor, the sickening odour, the room that was bedroom and sitting-room as well, horrified her. Yet Barnabas had been in many a worse place, and this was no exceptionally bad case; indeed, it was decent compared to many a cottage in Kent. But Meg lived before the day of district visiting, and the world of poverty was a new world to her.
A woman was lying on a press bed in the farthest corner, her eyes shut. Meg thought at first that she was dead. Her thin pinched little mother came hurrying from the inner room to meet them.
"She's had two more of them spasms since you left," she said to Barnabas. "I should think the next would about carry her off." She spoke in a querulous tone, as if the spasms were somehow the preacher's fault, but her face twitched nervously. She had small features like her daughter, and black eyes, and spoke with the south-country accent.
The woman on the bed stirred and then gave a quick choking sound, and Barnabas was by her side in an instant, supporting her in his arms. It was literally a fight for life!
The poor thing's eyes started, and the veins on her forehead swelled; Barnabas held her up with one arm, and fanned the air towards her mouth with the other hand.