We still clung to the old place, but it
did not seem the same to us. On the night of the sale by auction my aunt
said to me, sadly, as we took our candlesticks to go to bed: "It is
strange to think that we positively do not know under whose roof we are
going to sleep to-night." The change was felt most painfully by her. My
guardian had a more resigned way of accepting the evils of life; she had
a kind of Christian pessimism that looked upon terrestrial existence as
not "worth living" in itself, and a little less or more of trouble and
sorrow in this world seemed to her scarcely worth considering, being
only a part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Her sister had
intense local attachments, and the most intense of them all was for this
place, her birthplace, where she had passed her youth. This attachment
was increased in her case by a strong, deep, and poetic sentiment that I
hardly like to call aristocratic, because that word will have other
associations (of pride in expensive living) for most readers. My aunt
had the true sentiment of ancestry, and it was painful to her to see a
place go out of a family. I have the same sentiment, though with less
intensity, and there were other reasons that made me love Hollins
very much. At that time the natural beauty that surrounded it was
quite unspoilt. We were near to the streams and the moors that I
delighted in, and the idea of being obliged to leave, as we might be
at any time by the new proprietor, was painful to a degree that only
lovers of nature will understand.
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