Your mother have scrubbed the house through
because ye were coming, and dusted all the chimmer furniture, and
bought a new basin and jug of a travelling crockery-woman that
came to our door, and scoured the cannel-sticks, and claned the
winders! Ay, I don't know what 'a ha'n't a done. Never were such
a steer, 'a b'lieve.'
Conversation of this kind and inquiries of Stephen for his
mother's wellbeing occupied them for the remainder of the journey.
When they drew near the river, and the cottage behind it, they
could hear the master-mason's clock striking off the bygone hours
of the day at intervals of a quarter of a minute, during which
intervals Stephen's imagination readily pictured his mother's
forefinger wandering round the dial in company with the minute-
hand.
'The clock stopped this morning, and your mother in putting en
right seemingly,' said his father in an explanatory tone; and they
went up the garden to the door.
When they had entered, and Stephen had dutifully and warmly
greeted his mother--who appeared in a cotton dress of a dark-blue
ground, covered broadcast with a multitude of new and full moons,
stars, and planets, with an occasional dash of a comet-like aspect
to diversify the scene--the crackle of cart-wheels was heard
outside, and Martin Cannister stamped in at the doorway, in the
form of a pair of legs beneath a great box, his body being nowhere
visible. When the luggage had been all taken down, and Stephen
had gone upstairs to change his clothes, Mrs.
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