text: Under the Old Roof by Hesba Stretton - Read Online
  57 pages56 minutes
  Publisher: Hesba StrettonReleased: Dec 8, 2015ISBN: 9788892527379Format: book
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  Under the Old Roof - Hesba Stretton
  Chapter 1 - Watling Street.
  Chapter 2 - Her Heart's Desire.
  Chapter 3 - Abigail's Promise.
  Chapter 4 - Is it Just?
  Chapter 5 - The Workhouse Roof.
  Chapter 6 - Forewarnings.
  Chapter 7 - Dreams and Visions.
  Chapter 8 - Loving her Enemies.
  Chapter 9 - Depths of Mercy.
  Up in London, in the very heart of the City, there is a short and narrow street, with warehouses on each side so high as to keep the sunshine from the crowded pavement, along which heavy waggons, laden with goods, are passing to and fro all the day long. It is called Watling Street, and is part of the great Roman highway, running through the country from Kent to the far shores of Cardigan Bay. Here and there, in the heart of the country, as well as in the heart of the City, there are still to be found fragments of this grand old road. But Watling Street in the country is sure to be a lane, running between fields, yet so strongly and solidly made, that more than a thousand years of neglect, and of winter snows and summer tempests, have not materially injured it.
  Over a hundred and fifty miles from London, there lies a mile or two of the old Watling Street between high hedgerows, making it almost as shady as the tall buildings which hang over it in London. The trees meet overhead, interlacing their leafy branches in the summer sunshine, or their delicate tracery of bare twigs against the frosty skies of winter. Now, as during the past centuries, purple briony creeps over the thorn-bushes, and wild rose-briars shoot up their tall, strong stems, with sprays of pink roses blooming upon them. Violets and primroses, cowslips and fox-gloves come and go in their due season, year after year; and soft mosses lie like velvet on the rough bark of gnarled trees, grown grey with the storms of uncounted winters. So straight is the line of the old Roman road that you can look far down it as through a long tunnel, lit up with a cool green light, as far as your eye can reach. Brilliant dragon-flies flit across if, and the happy birds haunt it with brisk fluttering of wings. And if no sound of human voices is to be heard, timid rabbits play along the grass-grown roadway, and pert squirrels come down from the trees to search for nuts under the hazel-bushes.
  About a stone's throw from this fragment of Watling Street there stand three cottages, built half of timber, with high-pitched roofs of thatch, and gable windows rising out of the roof. They lie somewhat in a hollow, well guarded from keen winds, with a little brook, clear as crystal, running past them. Before and behind them there are old-fashioned gardens, well stocked with fruit-trees; and under the window of the largest of the cottages there stands a bench holding three beehives, from which a busy and joyous hum of happy labour issues from early dawn till late dusk. Old Thorneycroft's houses in Watling Street they are called by all the country round.
  Old Thorneycroft's houses they had been; but by some stress of misfortune, the old builder had been compelled to sell them, having, however, secured a purchaser who engaged not to disturb him during his lifetime, and to give him the chance of rebuying his cottages for the same sum as that he had sold them for. For the rest of his life old Thorneycroft and his daughter Abigail had lived like misers, and worked like slaves: and when her father lay dying, Abigail promised him solemnly that she would give herself no rest until the place was her own again. He left her sixty pounds towards the two hundred that were needed; the fruit of his hardest toil, and his constant self-denial.
  It was a few years after her father's death that Abigail married Richard Medlicott. For a long while her promise to her father weighed heavily against the thought of marriage. But Richard Medlicott had a pension of sixpence a day as a disabled soldier, and was a gifted man at shoemaking and cobbling. He had one child by a former marriage, a boy of ten, almost ready to get his own living, and Abigail at last consented to become his wife. Yet though he did not hinder her, he could not help her much towards attaining her end. She had to toil and strive, as it were, single-handed. The sun seldom rose before she did; and the moon