His head was bald, and the
few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But there was
a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light grey eye,
which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether as an old man.
As it was, he could walk from Oxney Colne to Priestown, fifteen long
Devonshire miles across the moor; and he who could do that could hardly
be regarded as too old for work.
But our present story will have more to do with his daughter than with
him. A pretty girl, I have said, was Patience Woolsworthy; and one, too,
in many ways remarkable. She had taken her outlook into life, weighing
the things which she had and those which she had not, in a manner very
unusual, and, as a rule, not always desirable for a young lady. The
things which she had not were very many. She had not society; she had
not a fortune; she had not any assurance of future means of livelihood;
she had not high hope of procuring for herself a position in life by
marriage; she had not that excitement and pleasure in life which she
read of in such books as found their way down to Oxney Colne Parsonage.
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