Chapter XVII

Another bright day shining in through the small casement, and

claiming fellowship with the kindred eyes of the child, awoke her. At

sight of the strange room and its unaccustomed objects she started up

in alarm, wondering how she had been moved from the familiar

chamber in which she seemed to have fallen asleep last night, and

whither she had been conveyed. But, another glance around called to

her mind all that had lately passed, and she sprung from her bed,

hoping and trustful.

It was yet early, and the old man being still asleep, she walked out

into the churchyard, brushing the dew from the long grass with her

feet, and often turning aside into places where it grew longer than in

others, that she might not tread upon the graves. She felt a curious

kind of pleasure in lingering among these houses of the dead, and

read the inscriptions on the tombs of the good people (a great number

of good people were buried there), passing on from one to another with

increasing interest.

It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the

cawing of the rooks who had built their nests among the branches of

some tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air.

First, one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and

dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it

would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to

himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than

before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first,

aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other

voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher

up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and

others, arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry

window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and

dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst

a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent

change of place, which satirised the old restlessness of those who lay

so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the strife in which they

had worn away their lives.

Frequently raising her eyes to the trees whence these sounds came

down, and feeling as though they made the place more quiet than

perfect silence would have done, the child loitered from grave to grave,

now stopping to replace with careful hands the bramble which had

started from some green mound it helped to keep in shape, and now

peeping through one of the low latticed windows into the church, with

its worm-eaten books upon the desks, and baize of whitened-green

mouldering from the pew sides and leaving the naked wood to view.

There were the seats where the poor old people sat, worn spare, and

The Old Curiosity Shop