Chapter 36 - Lizzie Leigh
She watched the mother feed her sick unwilling child, with every fond inducement to eat which she could devise.
They neither of them took notice of Susan's presence.
That night, they lay in each other's arms, but Susan slept on the ground beside them.
They took the little corpse, the little unconscious sacrifice whose early calling home had reclaimed her poor wandering mother,
to the hills which, in her lifetime, she had never seen.
They dared not lay her by the stern grandfather in Milnerow Churchyard,
but they bore her to a lone moorland graveyard, where long ago the Quakers used to bury their dead.
They laid her there on the sunny slope, where the earliest spring flowers blow.
Will and Susan live at the up-close farm.
Mrs. Lee and Lizzie dwell in a cottage so secluded,
that until you drop into the very hollow where it is placed, you do not see it.
Tom is a schoolmaster in Rochdale, and he and Will help to support their mother.
I only know that if the cottage be hidden in a green hollow of the hills,
every sound of sorrow in the whole upland is heard there.
Every call of suffering or of sickness for help is listened to,
by a sad, gentle-looking woman, who rarely smiles.
And when she does, her smile is more sad than other people's tears.
But who comes out of her seclusion whenever there's a shadow in any household?
Many hearts bless Lizzie Lee, but she, she prays always and ever for forgiveness,
such forgiveness as may enable her to see her child once more.
Mrs. Lee is quiet and happy. Lizzie is to her eyes something precious,
as the lost piece of silver, found once more.
Susan is the bright one who brings sunshine to all.
Children grow around her and call her blessed. One is called Nanny.
Her, Lizzie often takes to the sunny graveyard in the uplands.
And while the little creature gathers the daisies and makes chains,
Lizzie sits by a little grave and weeps bitterly.
End of Lizzie Lee by Elizabeth Gaskell