Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Friday, 12th.--A very fine, bright, clear, hard frost. Wm. working again. I recopied The Pedlar, but poor Wm. all the time at work.... In the afternoon a poor woman came, she said, to beg, ... but she has been used to go a-begging, for she has often come here. Her father lived to the age of 105. She is a woman of strong bones, with a complexion that has been beautiful, and remained very fresh last year, but now she looks broken, and her little boy--a pretty little fellow, and whom I have loved for the sake of Basil--looks thin and pale. I observed this to her. "Aye," says she, "we have all been ill. Our house was nearly unroofed in the storm, and we lived in it so for more than a week." The child wears a ragged drab coat and a fur cap. Poor little fellow, I think he seems scarcely at all grown since the first time I saw him. William was with me when we met him in a lane going to Skelwith Bridge. He looked very pretty. He was walking lazily, in the deep narrow lane, overshadowed with the hedgerows, his meal poke hung over his shoulder. He said he "was going a laiting." Poor creature! He now wears the same coat he had on at that time.