satisfactorily. So, after dinner on the round table. I buckled on my knapsack, gave the ruddy-faced landlady a copy of my recipes for making bread, cakes, and puddings out of Indian corn-meal, and resumed my walk towards Worcester, perfectly delighted with this opening experience.
It was, therefore, especially interesting to me to visit this way-side inn after an interval of twenty-one years. The whole scenery of these hills had impressed itself on my mind, and two or three incidents had been associated to it, fixing the impression more vividly. A mile or two further on towards Bromsgrove I was caught in a shower, and turned into a nailer's shop by the road-side for shelter. It was not much larger than a good-sized potato-bin with a tile roof to it. Here a father and his son were busily at work. The lad was only nine years old, standing with bare feet on a stone to raise him breast-high to the anvil. His face was smutty of course, as it ought to have been, and his long black hair was coarse and unkempt. He could not read, nor could his father afford to send him to school, as he needed his earnings for the support of younger children. He was a hearty, healthy, merry-eyed boy; still, as he was the first I lad seen of his age at the anvil, and not dreaming that any younger or poorer was to be found at the same work. I made a little martyr
