The young girl left the room. Yes, air and sunshine had always proved her good friends, bringing the delicious consciousness of youthful vigour, clearing her moral perceptions, and dispelling all morbid sensations. And the dean’s widow was right: the world was all May, the promise of the year was everywhere, and the mild air saturated with sunshine breathed health into mind and body. Kitty went out of the house-door and stood upon the steps, inhaling the fresh breeze as she involuntarily extended her round, firmly-moulded arms. Then, descending into the garden, she looked beyond the low picket-fence into the blue distance, beyond the meadows, beyond the river rolling through them, beyond the cottage-roofs and the church-spire. Oh, mysterious human heart, that in presence of all this glory was still so sad and cast down!
From the low wood-shed at the bottom of the garden came a constant, melodious twitter, and from beneath the eaves darted small, feathered creatures, their backs shining with a steely lustre, their throats rusty brown. The first swallows had come. Those eaves had been their nest for years. How often, as a child, had Kitty, lying in the grass, watched their outcomings and ingoings! but then their chatter had sounded lonely and sad in her ears, accompanied by the monotonous murmur of the water, the only other sound that broke the desolate silence reigning about the deserted house, unless upon autumn days, when the ripe fruit would now and then fall with a soft thud upon the sod. Now spoiled petted birds were trilling their songs from the open windows; the smoke from the chimney soared aloft, and spread a thin, sun-gilded veil above the meadow; beside the shed stood the kennel, and the cross, bristly house-dog tore at his chain and snapped at a pretty little light-brown hen that boldly ventured near him to get a few scattered grains of wheat. The housemaid had brought from her village house a cock and some hens, at the widow’s request. Yes, everything must revive the memory of the country parsonage of long ago.
Kitty chased the cackling hen away from the cross, growling dog, and wandered slowly about beneath the fruit-trees The dry, dead grass of the old year was here and there dashed with that blue which calls up a gleam of pleasure into the saddest eyes: the first violets were blossoming, and the tall, shapely girl bent as eagerly to pluck them as had the little "miller’s mouse" years ago. How strange it seemed to her that only a few weeks before, as her grandfather’s heiress, she had been mistress here! The sum which the doctor had paid for this little homestead belonged to her,—the honest, careful savings thrown in with the hoarded wealth of the grasping corn-dealer. She started, and involuntarily dropped the violets she had plucked. The same keen sensation of disgrace and humiliation which she had experienced yesterday in the midst of those furious women again assailed her. At the first shock she had protested against the terrible accusation; but now, whenever she called up in her memory her grandfather’s coarse, hard face, she could not but admit to herself that he might have said the cruel words about the "starving mice," and in positive pain she clenched her hands. She knew well that on her mother’s side she was sprung from the lowest class of society; she had never dreamed of wishing it otherwise,—she had rather gratefully acknowledged the splendid gift of perfect health and vigour bequeathed to her by her grandmother, whose stalwart arm had wielded the axe in the bracing woodland air; but the coarseness and brutality with which the former mill-servant had treated the poor in his pursuit of wealth disgusted and sickened her, and she could not bear to think of the iron safe with its hoarded treasures.