of the afternoon which is neither after lunch nor before tea, nor anything
else even on a half-holiday; and I had a fantastic feeling that I had
strayed into a lost and extra hour that is not numbered in the twenty-four.

I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as
private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if they
were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a
place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate
cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable
Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original
Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong,
and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors
stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind
them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet,
with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would
not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat;
and on the table a copy of 'Household Words'.

I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met
somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet
it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid
and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of
Wordsworth's rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder,
and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for
Wordsworth's men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or
flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored
skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps
that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet.
Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town
was like a cup of water given at morning.