Katharine Ashton Author:Elizabeth Missing Sewell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Then, mamma," said Jane, playfully, " I had better put on my bonnet, and go out to my old women ; and so give me a kiss, and wish me good bye, and hope that th... more »ey won't have dreadful tales to tell of each other, for that makes me more unhappy than any thing." CHAPTER IV. Jane walked into High Street, and when she reached the upper end turned into a narrow lane that led into the country. Just beyond was a row of old picturesque almshouses; they formed a portion of a small district, which had been given her in charge by Mr. Reeves, the Vicar of Rilworth. Jane did not think she was doing any vast amount of good by undertaking a district. She was only a learner, and the work offered her was much less than it would have been in other parts of the town, and consisted chiefly in reading to the old women who could not go to church, and reporting special cases of sickness and distress to Mr. Reeves. Yet it was work; it was something definite, and under rule, and Jane could better bear to hear, as she was beginning to hear, of sin and suffering, when she felt that, as far as in her lay, she was doing something, however slight, to relieve it. Since her return to Rilworth she had sometimes felt that life in a country town—in any town, or large village in fact, or wherever numbers of her fellow-creatures were congregated, would be very oppressive if she were forced to sit idle. Probably she would have felt it more if her thoughts had been disengaged; but even Jane Sinclair, sincere and practical though she undoubtedly was, now and then grew dreamy when she dwelt upon the bright future of a married life. She had paid her visits, and was just leaving the last cottage beyond the almshouses, when a wide heavy cart drove down the lane, and prevented her from crossing the road as she ha...« less