Excerpt
CHAPTER I.
'Lisbeth Lillibun lived a hundred miles from London. If she had not lived a hundred miles from London, it is likely you would never have heard of her. She would have liked it better had somebody else lived where she did instead of herself. 'Lisbeth was a very little girl when she found out that she lived a hundred miles from London. So was Dickon, her brother, very little when he found it out, but he did not care so much about it; indeed I think he did not care at all.
'Lisbeth always remembered the day upon which she found it out. She could not quite count a hundred herself at the time; she could count ten, but had not learned to count a hundred. She had heard Gorham count a hundred, and knew that it was a great many more than ten. She thought that ten was a great many. She knew that ten miles must be a great way; she had several times walked a mile. She had walked a mile the day she discovered that it was a hundred miles to London. A hundred miles, she knew, was a very great way.
'Lisbeth had concluded that she would like to live in London; that she would live in London; that London was the only proper place for any body to live. This was why she did not like to discover that London was a hundred miles away. But how she came to know anything about London, or to think it was the only proper place to live, I shall not pretend to say.
She had gone a long way from home, that day, with Dickon; as I said, she had gone a mile. It was a pleasant mile, straight across the fields, but they should not have gone so far. Mother was at the mill; Gorham had gone to school; Trotty was asleep. Dickon and 'Lisbeth wanted to do something, or see something, so they wandered over the fields for a mile. If they had not gone so far, 'Lisbeth would not have heard about the distance to London; she would have been more happy had she not gone so far; she would not have heard the men, with the packs on their backs, reading the mile-stone. She should not have gone so far from home; we generally come to some grief when we do something which is not quite right. 'Lisbeth did.
Dickon wished to show her the flowers blooming by the way; he wished to show her the bees buzzing in the flowers; he wished to show her the bird warbling on the post, but she was looking at the two men with the packs on their backs; she was looking at them plodding along the way. They grew smaller and smaller to her eyes. They became but specks. They disappeared.
She thought she would see them again in London. She would ask them how they got there, and how they liked it. So Dickon watched the bees, a long while, by himself, and looked at the pretty flower-hearts; and the bird warbled on the post, but 'Lisbeth knew not a thing about it.
Everything looked more happy than 'Lisbeth; the grass that grew under foot, and the contented little weeds that nodded and dozed in the sun, and the flowers that hung just where they grew, with the most comfortable little faces, and the bird that warbled on the post.
Indeed, as to the bird, it might have been thought that he did not admire 'Lisbeth's serious face, that he was too happy himself to be looking at any one who was not as happy as he was, for, though at first, with head turned toward her, he ruffled his throat, and swayed from side to side as he sung and sung, he suddenly grew mute, eyed 'Lisbeth with one eye and then with the other, and like a bird who had made up his mind, turned his back upon her, still standing on the post, and lifted his head, and ruffled his throat, and filled the air with his sweet notes, without so much as turning an eye toward 'Lisbeth as she stood....