Page:Gissing - Workers in the Dawn, vol. I, 1880.djvu/33

Rh His very appearance enforced one to conceive towards him a mingled sentiment of affection and compassion; for though his eye was ever bright, his lofty forehead unwrinkled, his cheek ever answering with a warm flush to the affectionate impulses of his heart, yet the first glance showed you that the man was an invalid, that his days were in all probability numbered. His malady was consumption; it had made its first decided appearance when he came of age, and now that he was almost thirty-five he could entertain no hope of its relaxing the hold it had gained upon his constitution.

The rectory of Bloomford was situated on a gently sloping hill-side, about a quarter of a mile above the church. It was a picturesque old building, with a roof of red tiles and a multiplicity of chimneys and gables, with small latticed windows in the upper story, broad eaves beneath which endless birds made their nests, and, over all, a forest of ivy, so old that the stems were like the trunks of trees. Before the house lay a carefully tended flower garden, behind it a kitchen garden and an orchard, all around which ran a crumbling brick wall, some six feet high, on the outside thickly overgrown with the abounding ivy, within kept clear for the training of peach and plum trees. Even now, at the end of November, it was by no means a dreary place, for its smallness always