The Village

PASTORALS
OF
DORSET

BY
M. E. FRANCIS
(Mrs. FRANCIS BLUNDELL)

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

CLAUD C. DU PRÉ COOPER

NEW IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1915

[All rights reserved]

NOTE.

Some of these stories have already appeared in The Cornhill Magazine, Longman’s Magazine, Temple Bar, Punch, The Times Weekly and The Illustrated London News; and are reprinted by kind permission of the Editors of these periodicals.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SHEPHERD ROBBINS.

Farmer Joyce walked meditatively up the steep, deeply-rutted lane which led to the field wherein his sheep were penned. He was a tall, bluff, burly old man, carrying himself erect in spite of his seventy years, and capable still of performing a hard day’s work with the best of his juniors.

On one of his broad shoulders rested a pitchfork supporting a goodly truss of hay; in the other hand he carried a shepherd’s crook. A quaint, picturesque, pastoral figure was this, clad in the antiquated smock frock, now so seldom to be seen, but which Farmer Joyce wore summer and winter alike; his nether limbs were encased in corduroys and stout leather leggings, and his great nailed boots left impressions, gigantic and far apart, on the muddy soil. The cutting wind frolicked with his iron-grey beard and hair, and intensified the ruddy hue of his broad honest face. The years which had passed over that kindly face had left wonderfully few traces, except for the dust with which they had powdered the once coal-black hair and beard. There were no furrows in the brow, no pinched lines about the mouth; the eyes looked forth from under their whitened lashes with the large contemplative gaze of the man accustomed to pass his life between earth and sky, to sweep wide horizons, to take note, with one comprehensive glance, of the changes of the weather, of the coming of the seasons as indicated by sun and clouds, by bloom or decay advancing over vast tracts of country.

Farmer Joyce had a mind above petty cares; the small home worries and anxieties he left, as he frequently announced, his missus to see to; for himself he kept his soul untroubled, taking good and evil fortune alike philosophically. Yet to-day his face wore a puzzled, not to say perturbed, expression, and, as he neared the top of the hill, he imperceptibly slackened his long, swinging strides.

At the turn of the road, through the black irregular line of wintry hedgerow, came glimpses of yellow, standing out vividly against the sombre background of dull green and grey; these were the hurdles carefully padded with straw which penned in the lambing ewes. From the spot where Farmer Joyce stood, pausing a moment hesitatingly before continuing the ascent, a small tarred shepherd’s hut reared itself between him and the sky, and presently the figure of a man appeared slowly moving round it.

“There he be,” murmured the farmer to himself, and went on more rapidly.

The figure advanced to meet him, and was standing by the small wicket gate leading to the field by the time the other reached it.

An old man, much older, apparently, than his master, the outlines of his bent shoulders sharply defined under the soiled linen jacket; his ragged hair and whiskers white, his very face grey and rugged, ploughed into deep furrows by time and hardship; the eyes looking straight before them with a dull non-expectant gaze; the horny old hand, which rested on the gate, gnarled and knotted, and extraordinarily thin.

“Good-day to you, shepherd. How’s the rheumatics?”

“Good-day, farmer; good-day. Rheumatics is bad, thank ye.”

“Ah,” said Joyce, “I fear ye’re falterin’, shepherd, I do, truly.”

Shepherd Robbins made no response; he stood aside to let his master pass into the enclosure. Then the two paced together from pen to pen, the farmer’s usually dreamy eye alert enough now, and quick to take note of anything amiss. Once or twice he found fault, and once or twice he gave directions; Robbins receiving commands and admonitions alike in stolid silence. With stiff and feeble movements he helped the farmer to set before the ewes the provender which he had brought, and stood watching them with him while they precipitated themselves upon it.

“What a din they do make—a body can scarce hear his own voice,” cried Joyce, turning away at last.

“’Tis their natur’ like, master,” replied the shepherd, hobbling after him. “There’s little need of a-hearin’ one’s own voice with ewes and lambs about. It do take a man all his time to see to ’em.”

“Ah,” agreed the farmer, stopping short suddenly and looking at him, “it do, shepherd; it do. ’Tis more nor many a man can do. ’Tis more nor you can do at your time of life, shepherd, I d’ ’low.”

“I do do it,” returned Robbins stolidly.

“Ah,” pursued the farmer, following out his own train of thought, as though he had not heard him, “we be near lambin’ time now, and ’tis puzzlin’ to know how ye’re agoin’ to manage it. It do puzzle me, I know. Ye’re falterin’, man, I tell ’ee.”

Robbins gazed vacantly at his master, rubbing his gnarled hands together slowly.

“My missus was a-sayin’ it to me only last night,” pursued the other. “She do think—”

But here some gleam of intelligence seemed to filter into Robbins’ mind.

“Missus do think I’m past work,” he said. “That’s what she do do. Missus never could abear me.”

“Now then, come,” cried the farmer, with a kind of mild roar of exasperation. “The missus is a good missus to ’ee, Robbins. She be but anxious for to help ’ee.”

“She’s onreasonable,” grumbled the shepherd; “onreasonable, that’s what she be. She do look for too much, and expect too much. When Daisy calved she was vexed at its bein’ a bull calf. ‘Well, missus,’ I says, ‘I can’t help it if it be a bull. Things falls out so,’ I says, ‘as we can’t always have our own way. There must be he’s as well as she’s in this world.’ An’ she did rate me for the sayin’, an’ she do keep a grudge agin me ever since.”

“Nay, now,” said Farmer Joyce, sinking his voice, but still speaking with the air of mild expostulation which had characterised his former remarks. “She don’t bear ’ee no grudge, man, not she. She be all for doin’ ’ee a good turn, I tell ’ee. Says she to me last night, ‘We must gi’ shepherd help,’ she says, ‘else he’ll ne’er get through wi’ the lambin’ this year. He desarves consideration,’ she says. ‘He’s worked for ’ee faithful all his life. We mus’n’t let un drop in ’arness,’ says she. Them be her very words, shepherd.”

Robbins continued to rub his hands, but without any appearance of gratification. Mr. Joyce coughed, stuck his pitchfork in the ground, but almost immediately took it out again. He seemed to find some difficulty in proceeding.

“Them was her very words,” he resumed, however, presently. “‘He mus’n’t be allowed to drop in ’arness. We shall be four shillin’ a week out o’ pocket, but Shepherd Robbins do desarve it,’ she says.”

The farmer paused again. It takes some little time for a new idea to penetrate into the inner consciousness of a Dorset rustic, but after a few moments Robbins seemed to grasp this one, and a gleam came into his faded eyes.

“Four shillin’ a week,” he repeated. “What kind o’ chap be you a-goin’ to get for that money, master? Why, the lads ’nd scarce frighten the crows for that.”

The farmer coughed again and gently prodded the ground with his pitchfork, watching the operation with apparently intent interest for a moment or two. Then he slowly raised his eyes.

“He’ll be a-gettin’ eight shillin’ a week, shepherd. Ye see, ’tis this way. We be a-payin’ you twelve shillin’ now, we be.”

Robbins nodded. He had ceased to rub his hands, but stood with the palms still tightly pressed together.

“Well, ye see, we didn’t a-grudge it ye. Ye was wuth it to us, shepherd—while ye was strong an’ hearty ye was wuth it to us,” he repeated handsomely. “But now, ye bain’t fit for much, and that’s the trewth; ’tis no fault o’ yourn, but ye bain’t. We lost a terrible lot o’ lambs last year. Ye be too stiff in your joints to get about quick, an’ ye can’t get through your work. It comes hard on we, ye see, to be payin’ out good money an’ not gettin’ the money value—an’ it comes hard on you too, now ye be a-gettin’ into years, shepherd, to be strivin’ an’ contrivin’ like, an’ bibberin’ in the frostiss an’ snow stuff, an standin’ out o’ nights when the rheumatics is bad. ’Tis cruel hard for ye, shepherd.”

“Ay, sure,” agreed Robbins more readily than usual. He did not in the least see the drift of the farmer’s argument, but felt that the last proposition was indubitably true.

“So ye see ’tis this way: I lose four shillin’ a week by hirin’ a chap to help ’ee, and you lose four shillin’ a week. I’ll pay him eight shillin’, an’ I’ll pay you eight shillin’, an’ ye’ll divide the work between ye. That’s it, do ye see?” said Farmer Joyce confidentially. “Divide the work an’ divide the wage.”

Robbins stared at him, vacantly at first, then with a growing sense of indignation as he began dimly to understand the nature of the proposal.

“I don’t agree, master,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “Nay, that I don’t. I never axed no help, an’ I’m not a-goin’ to divide no wage. Twelve shillin’ a week is what I did agree for, an’ I’ve a-had it for twenty year an’ more. I can’t do with no less now nor I did then.”

“Well, but,” argued the farmer, “’tis this way, ye see, I can’t afford to be at a loss. I’ve a-stood it as long as I could, shepherd, but I can’t noways let things go wrong this season same as last; I can’t truly. Ye mustn’t be onreasonable. Why, look ’ee—d’ye know any man o’ your years in these parts as gets twelve shillin’ a week? It’s the natur’ o’ things as when they can’t do the full day’s work they can’t have the full day’s pay. Look at Adam Blanchard and Eddard Boyt yon. When they began to falter they made up their minds to it and went back to eight shillin’ a week same as their grandsons do get.”

“Ay,” agreed Robbins bitterly, “little chaps leavin’ school gets eight shillin’ a week—it’s bwoy’s wage, bwoy’s wage.”

“An’ very good wage too,” retorted the farmer, now as much nettled as was possible for one of his placid nature. “You ought to take it an’ be thankful, Abel Robbins. Many a man ’ud be proud an’ glad to earn as much an’ have it paid reg’lar. Many a able-bodied man wi’ a family,” he added impressively. “’Tis enough an’ more than enough for you, a lone man wi’ no one dependin’ on ye, so to speak.”

“Ay, I am a lone man, I am that,” agreed the shepherd warmly. “An’ why am I a lone man? When I worked for ye first, after your father died, says you, ‘We must have a single man,’ says you. ‘I must have ye on the spot,’ says you, ‘with all them dumb things about the place to see to.’ So I give up walkin’ wi’ the maid I was coortin’ an’ give up the notion o’ gettin’ wed. An’ when you got married yourself your missus sent me to lodge in the village.”

“Well, an’ why didn’t ye get tied up then?” returned Joyce, with no less heat. “Why, that’s nigh forty year ago. You have had time, sure, to pick a wife between this an’ then?”

Abel stared at him reflectively. “I’d got used to bein’ without one,” he said, dropping his voice. “I was goin’ on thirty, then. Ay, it was too late. I’d given up the thought o’ womankind, an’ ’twouldn’t have seemed nait’ral like. But I could wish now that I did ha’ married an’ had childern to keep me.”

“Ye mid ha’ been without ’em,” replied Joyce, once more placid and thoughtful. “Ay, shepherd, ’tis very like you would. There’s nothin’ in my opinion more disappointin’ an’ onsartin than wedlock. There was my mother, a poor ailing thing, an’ Lard, what a family she did have to be sure! The babbies used to be like rabbits—’pon me word they was. But they died most of ’em, an’ only a matter o’ half a-dozen o’ us grew up. Well now, look at my missus—she be a fine, strong, healthy woman, bain’t she? Never had chick nor child, as the sayin’ goes. An’ my first wife, ye mind her, Abel? She was a straight woman an’ a stout un, an’ the only child she had was a poor nesh little thing, that withered away, ye may say, as soon as it was born. Ye mightn’t ha’ had no children, shepherd, an’ if so be ye had wed ye’d have had the wife to keep.”

“That’s true,” assented Abel.

“An’ there’s another thing,” pursued the farmer, following up his advantage, “if you’d ha’ married when ye was a young un, your sons would be gettin’ into years pretty well by now themselves. They’d have wives an’ families o’ their own. Lard bless you! that they would, an’ where ’ud you be among ’em all?”

This flight of imagination was too much for Robbins, who did not attempt to follow it. He came back instead to the point at issue.

“Eight shillin’ a week,” he repeated. “’Tis what your father give me when I first worked for en. Ay, I worked for en for that an’ kept myself. You mind the time, master; you were a young un too yourself—there is but a two year atween us, but you’ve wore well, fanner; a deal better nor I. ’Tis the good food, I daresay—ay, ay, it makes a lot of difference. Good keep makes fat sheep, as the sayin’ goes. A man laisses twice as long if his victuals is nourishin’.”

“Come, come, I do ’low you’re tough though,” laughed his master good-naturedly. “Ye’ll see me down, maybe. You come of a long-lived race, shepherd.”

“Ay, eight shillin’ a week yer father give me,” repeated Robbins, reverting to his original statement, and once more rubbing his hands and blinking his dim eyes as though in the effort to gaze back on that distant past. “I mind ’twas thought wonderful high pay i’ them days; folks was gettin’ six shillin’ an’ five, but yer father said I was wuth it to en; an’ when he died an’ I went to live yonder with you ye give me eight shillin’ a week an’ my keep—ay, that was summat, I was hearty enough then. Ye give me that for ten year, an’ then ye got married an’ I must shift to the village, an’ then ye give me ten shillin’ a week. And when I were fifty year of age I up an’ I says to you, ‘Master,’ says I, ‘I’ve a-sarved ye twenty-five year now an’ ye must raise me,’ says I, d’ye mind? So ye rose me two shillin’, didn’t ye? Well, an’ I’ve had twelve shillin’ a week ever since,” he summed up, and his eyes, which had been travelling slowly back over the years, reverted altogether to the present and fixed themselves reproachfully on his master’s face. “An’ now I be to have bwoy’s pay again, be I?” he queried with an almost childish quiver and droop of the under lip.

“Well, Abel, ’tis onfortunate—terrible onfortunate, ’tis truely. I’m fair puzzled, I am,” returned the farmer, much moved himself. “Look at it whichever way you will it don’t seem fair, but there’s a deal o’ difference between the look o’ things an’ the real natur’ of em’, shepherd. Look at figures now, an’ prices. Lard, when ye count by pence ye seem to have such a lot you’re fair puzzled wi’ addin’ ’em up—a body ’ud need to have twenty fingers instead of a cluster o’ five. But put ’em into shillin’s an’ where are ye? An’ put ’em into pounds, ah—” here the farmer drew in his breath with a sucking sound that implied volumes. “An’ yet it be all the same money, Abel.”

The shepherd, looking at him still reproachfully, shook his head.

“I know nothin’ about figures, master; all I know is ’tis cruel hard that when I’ve a-worked all my days for ’ee, Farmer Joyce, you turn on me i’ my ancient years. It be hard, an’ I can’t say no different.”

For the third time that day Mr. Joyce’s usually equable temper was disturbed. He now spoke angrily, partly to end the dispute, for the sight of Abel Robbins’ haggard, reproachful face was almost more than he could bear, partly because he was vexed at the pertinacity with which the old fellow adhered to his own point of view, partly because his kind heart smote him for the course of action he was about to pursue, though his judgment held it to be just.

“Well, ’tis this way, Robbins,” he cried roughly, “take it or leave it, an’ please yourself. I’ve made ye a fair offer, an’ more than a fair offer. I can get another man to do all the work for ten shillin’ a week—men be plenty an’ work be scarce—’tis clear loss of six shillin’ a week out o’ my own pocket, an’ if I’m willin’ to put up with it you should be content; I’ll stick to my bargain.”

“Well, I bain’t content, master,” cried Robbins, a dull fire coming into his eyes. “I’d sooner leave—I’d sooner give notice—ay, that I would.”

I be mazed; I be fair mazed

Farmer Joyce raised hands and eyes to Heaven.

“I never heard such talk from a reasonable man. If you do leave me, how be you a-goin’ to live? Who’s a-going to take you on as a new hand if you leave me? It’ll be the House, man. There, don’t talk so foolish like. Think it over an’ give me your answer on Saturday. I’ll not hear a word on’t till then. It’s never my way to be hasty. Take time, shepherd; take time. When you’ve a-thought it over you’ll find it’s not such a bad bargain.”

He turned away and strode down the hill, crook and pitchfork on shoulder. Robbins made no effort to detain him, but stood watching the receding figure in a dazed way till it disappeared at the angle of the lane. Then he walked back slowly to the enclosure where the sheep were still feeding and stood for a moment or two looking at them according to his custom, but without noticing them.

“I be mazed,” he said to himself; “I be fair mazed.”

Gradually he woke to the consciousness that his limbs were trembling under him, and his head dizzy, and leaving the sheep pen he entered the hut and sat down on the solitary chair which it contained. In one corner, curled up on an old coat that Robbins sometimes put on when the nights were exceptionally cold, lay his dog, which, on his master’s entrance, opened its eyes without raising its head and wagged its tail in welcome. The keen yellow eyes remained fixed on Robbins’ face, and after a time the tail ceased wagging, and the dog stiffly rose, shook itself, and pattered across the floor to the shepherd’s feet. Finding still no return, it laid its head upon Abel’s knee, looking up into his face with such a world of dumb questioning anguish that it at length elicited a response. Robbins stretched out his hand, which still shook oddly, and patted the tawny head,

“Ay, Bob, I see thee,” he said; “there, down, down!” as the dog, springing up, began to lick his face. “We can’t help it, boy; we’re to be chucked out, thee and I. You be getting old, too, an’ ’tis a sin to be old i’ these times. Nobody wants us, Bob. If some folks had their will you an’ me ’ud be knocked on the head, Bob; an’ I do ’low it ’ud be the best way. I could a’most wish as somebody ’ud come up without my knowing it an’ jest—settle me. Livin’s poor work when folk be wishin’ to be rid on ye.”

Bob slid on to the floor again and laid his old white muzzle on the worn corduroy knee; and Abel continued to stroke his head, but without speaking, until at last the sympathetic eyes closed, and the dog dozed, still pressing close to him. Then Abel suffered his hand to drop and sat as before, staring blankly at the wall in front of him.

Saturday came, one of those mild, south country days when winter seems to give place to spring; the sky was blue, thrushes were singing; the air was soft and fragrant, almost as with the spicy smell of mounting sap and growing herbage. Farmer Joyce toiled up the hill again with his smock frock thrown open, and his hat on the back of his head. His face, too, was full of a mild radiance as he paused within the gate of the enclosure.

“Well shepherd?” he said interrogatively.

Robbins had been turning over the litter within the pens, and continued his occupation for a moment or two, the sun gleaming on his white hair and the golden straw. Then he drove the pitchfork slowly into the ground and turned round, holding himself erect; his old dog came shambling forward and stood by his side.

“Well, farmer,” said Abel grimly, “I be goin’.”

His master stood gazing at him, shading his eyes with his hand. “When be ye goin’, shepherd?” he asked still mildly.

“This day week,” returned the shepherd briefly.

“How be goin’ to live, Abel?”

Robbins made no reply. Farmer Joyce thumped the gate with his massive brown fist.

“Ye’ll starve, Abel, that’s what ye’ll do.”

“Well, then,” cried Abel, thumping the gate too with his lean old hand, “I will starve, farmer. I don’t care so much if I do starve; livin’s weary work—the sooner I be done with it the better.”

“Shepherd, shepherd,” expostulated Farmer Joyce in real distress and perplexity, “this be fool’s talk—this be nothin’ but stubbornness. I’ll not take such an answer.”

“Ye may take it,” retorted Robbins, thumping the gate again, “for ye’ll not get no other.”

“Well, I be sorry, Abel; I be very sorry—I—I be terrible sorry. You’ve sarved me faithful, Abel.”

“Ay, master, I do ’low I’ve sarved ’ee too faithful,” returned Robbins. He betook himself to his pitchfork again, and all his master’s remonstrances failed to extract another word.

Sorely perturbed in mind Joyce withdrew at last, and made his way homewards. Throwing down his hat on the kitchen table he informed his wife of the result of the interview.

“I could a’most wish as we hadn’t ha’ said nothin’ about it to the old chap. He won’t last long—an’ I might ha’ made shift to help him a bit.”

“That be real nonsense,” returned his better half. “’Twould be a pretty notion for the master to be a-workin’ for the man. Let him go if he’s set on’t—he’ll repent it.”

She set a dish on the table with somewhat unnecessary energy, and her husband held his peace for a moment or two. By-and-bye, however, he put into words that which was in the minds of both.

“We’ll be like to repent it, too. Abel be wonderful handy about the place. ’Tis but his j’ints as is straggled. He be no Sammy, shepherd bain’t; his head’s wise enough yet if his body be tewly.”

“I do ’low ye didn’t take him the right way,” said Mrs. Joyce, looking at her husband with severe disapproval. “Men-folk be all alike, they’ve no notion o’ things. I’ll lay a shillin’ ye took en rough like—told en he weren’t good for nothin’, an’ vexed en so that he were fair dathered. Leave en to me, I’ll talk to en a bit, an’ see what I can make of en.”

Then she banged another plate upon the table and added somewhat inconsequently, “I’ve no patience with en—nor you neither”.

Later in the day she was standing, knitting in hand, watching a brood of very young chickens which had made their appearance at an astonishingly early date. Despite this fact they were hardy, healthy little things, and Mrs. Joyce smiled as she watched them running in and out from under their mother, picking up the meal she threw them with great alertness and enjoyment.

Mrs. Joyce was a tall, large woman with sandy hair, from which the sun now brought out pretty lights. She had the temper which usually accompanies such hair, easily roused and as easily appeased. The mere sight of these yellow, fluffy chickens, the consciousness of the sunshine, and the fragrance, and suggestiveness, had filled her with a kind of hazy content. The wall-flowers yonder under the kitchen windows were already ablow, she observed. The pigs, too, were coming on nicely; the calf, which was bleating not unmusically in one of the outhouses, had had the good sense to be a heifer. Altogether Mrs. Joyce felt that the world was not a bad place and that life was worth living.

She was in this frame of mind when, chancing to raise her eyes, she saw the figure of Shepherd Robbins shambling slowly down the steep “pinch” of road that led to the farm gate. Perhaps it was the sudden contrast between that gaunt form, that haggard, melancholy face, and the surrounding brightness and prosperity that moved her, perhaps because, being a good-hearted woman in the main, she shared her husband’s regret at the course events were taking; in any case at sight of him her anger melted away, and a flood of genuine pity swept over her heart.

She went to meet Robbins at the gate and laid her hand kindly on his arm.

“Why, shepherd,” she said, and her pleasant voice assumed an inflection that was almost tender, “’tis never true what my husband tells me? You bain’t a-thinkin’ of leaving we? We couldn’t get on without ’ee.”

Sometimes an unexpected kind word from a person whom we have distrusted, and perhaps disliked, carries more weight than a similar one from a friend. Poor Robbins had been dogged and surly enough with the master whom he loved, but when the missus, with whom he had hitherto lived, as it were, on the defensive, spoke so gently and looked so kind, he gazed back at her astonished, softened, confounded.

And when she said again: “Why, shepherd, you bain’t goin’ to desert we?” he suddenly burst into tears.

“No ma’am,” he said brokenly. “I—I—what be I to do?” The tears were running down his face. “I d’ ’low I’d be loth to leave master.”

“Well, you mustn’t think on it,” returned Mrs. Joyce decidedly. “We couldn’t do without you. See—’tis all a bit o’ temper, bain’t it? You never truly meant to give notice?”

“I did, missus; I did,” sobbed the old man. “It bain’t temper neither, it—it be the notion, I think.”

“Yes, that’s all it be, sure,” said Mrs. Joyce, not in the least knowing what he meant, but speaking in soothing tones and patting his arm kindly; “’tis but a notion, Abel. Eight shillin’ bain’t so bad, you know—come. You’ll never want so long as you ’arn eight shillin’ a week—eight shillin’ a week ’ll keep you, wunt it?”

“Ay, it’ll keep me, missus—it bain’t that. But I do ’low it’ll be main hard to go up on pay-day wi’ ’em all, an’ take laiss nor any of ’em—me that has always took the most. They’ll all be castin’ eyes at me an’ talkin’ small o’ me. They’ll be sayin’, ‘Shepherd be takin’ bwoy’s wage. He bain’t worth his salt now, shepherd bain’t.’ It’s the notion o’ that, missus, as I can’t stand—nohow.”

“Oh, that’s what it be,” returned his mistress thoughtfully.

The excitement which rendered Robbins so unusually garrulous had flushed his cheeks and given light to his eyes. The woman’s heart was touched as she looked at him.

“Ay, ma’am, an’ another thing—the lad as I be to have help me, he’ll be a cheeky un very like—the ruck o’ lads be. He’ll think himself as good as me—better mayhap. He’ll be gettin’ same money as me, ye know. What’ll he think o’ me at my time o’ life? Adam Blanchard and Eddard Boyt they be gettin’ same as their grandsons I d’ ’low, but there! the boys be their grandsons, an’ if they don’t treat ’em respectful-like they can give ’em the stick.”

Mrs. Joyce was silent for a moment, her brows were knit and her lips compressed; she seemed to be turning over a problem in her mind. Suddenly her face lit up.

“Abel,” she said, “I’m o’ your mind arter all. I think instead o’ your master cuttin’ off your wages he ought to raise you. You ought to have some reward for your long years of faithful service. In my opinion your master ought to raise you to sixteen shillin’.”

Shepherd Robbins looked as though he scarcely heard aright.

“Why, missus!” he exclaimed, and paused overcome.

“Yes; if master raises you, nobody couldn’t vex you, an’ yet nobody couldn’t find aught amiss. The master ’ud tell ’em all ’twas but nat’ral after ye bein’ wi’ us so long an’ so punished wi’ rheumatics. It’s time he should do something more for ’ee. An’ so, he’d say, he’s goin’ to raise you an’ you be goin’ to keep a lad.”

Robbins still stared, astonishment and delight vying with each other in his face. “That ’ud be a different story!” he ejaculated.

“An’, you see, you could pick your own bwoy easy then—he’d be your bwoy; you could choose en for yourself, an’ send en away if he didn’t behave hisself. Would that do ye?” she asked with modest triumph.

“Do me!—ah, that it would! I did never expect so much. But master won’t hear on it, sure!”

“He will, though—I’ll see to that. ’Tis but your due, shepherd. I d’ ’low you deserve some reward; we bain’t onreasonable!”

She turned quickly, and went into the house, leaving Robbins radiant but still half incredulous.

He was forced to believe in his own good fortune, however, when at pay time Farmer Joyce announced the intended promotion of Shepherd Robbins, who, in view of his long service and failing health, was now to receive an increase of wages amounting to four shillings a week.

The shepherd bore himself with becoming modesty under the congratulations of his comrades. One or two of them were disposed to be envious, but for the most part they received the intelligence in an ungrudging spirit.

“They do say that you be goin’ to keep a bwoy, shepherd,” remarked the ploughman a little later, gazing at him with respectful admiration.

“Very like I be,” returned Abel loftily. He was not proud, but thoroughly aware of his own importance.

One of the other men, the father of a family, humbly mentioned that he had a fine well-grown lad at home that would, maybe, suit Mr. Robbins as well as another, and Abel graciously promised to think of it.

He went home thoroughly convinced that a piece of most unexpected good luck had befallen him, an opinion which was shared by all his neighbours. As for Mr. and Mrs. Joyce they kept their own counsel.

PRIVATE GRIGGS.

The November landscape was sombre and melancholy enough; brown, newly-ploughed fields alternating for the most part with the tawny stubble of land that still lay fallow. A few withered leaves clung to the branches of trees and hedges; the sky was grey, the air heavy and yet cold. It was a fit day to hear news of trouble, Mrs. Frizzell thought, as her eyes roamed over the prospect, not vaguely as another woman’s might have done, but with a definite object in view.

She proceeded at a round pace up the lane, and along the high road, leaving it, after half a mile or so, to strike across the fields.

She was a small, energetic-looking woman, with hazel eyes and prematurely grey hair. Her usually cheerful face was deadly pale to-day, and its characteristically alert expression had given place to one of devouring anxiety.

Presently against the sky-line above a distant hedge appeared the head and shoulders of a man, and a little way in front of him the ears and crests of two horses. Mrs. Frizzell quickened her pace, making for a familiar gap in the hedge aforesaid, through which she presently squeezed herself.

The man, who had not seen her, continued his slow progress across the field. Without calling out to him she broke into a run, her feet sinking deep at every step in the newly turned-up soil; after a few minutes she reached him, panting, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

He looked round with a start, and brought his horses to a standstill.

“Martha! what brings ye out at this time o’ day?”

“Nothing good,” said Martha. She threw a hasty glance round. “Be there any one about?”

She spoke in a peculiarly loud and distinct key, and he answered in the low, mumbling tone habitual to deaf people.

“Nay, who should be about? There bain’t nobody here but myself.”

“I think I’ll go with ’ee to the top o’ the hill and make sure—I don’t want nobody to hear what I’ve a-got to tell ’ee. Go on—go on to the top o’ the drill.”

“I be to go forrard?” questioned her husband, staring at her stupidly.

“’Ees, take them harses up to the top o’ the drill, and then I’ll talk to ’ee.”

Frizzell admonished his horses to proceed, and went plodding on up the rising ground along which he had traced his furrow, glancing round every now and then at the set face of his wife as she plodded in his rear.

He was a big, blond, good-natured man, whose natural dulness of wit was intensified by his infirmity.

When they reached the brow of the hill Martha slipped in front of him, and standing on tip-toe, cast a searching glance round. A flock of sheep was penned in a corner of the adjacent turnip-field, a few rooks were waddling up the furrows nearer at hand; over their heads a heron was slowly sailing with wide, sweeping wings on his way to the river, but not a human creature was in sight.

“Well,” said John Frizzell as she turned towards him, “whatever be the matter, Missus? I wish you’d out wi’ it.”

“I have had a letter from my cousin Julia, Father, and she have telled me some bad noos about our Susan.”

John’s jaw dropped, and the colour forsook his face, leaving it pale beneath its tan.

“Why—be the maid took ill?” he inquired with a gasp.

“She bain’t well—and she bain’t like to be well. She’ve a-been ill-used, Father. There, the silly girl wouldn’t hearken to what I did al’ays tell her, an’ now she be sufferin’ for’t. She’ve been an’ took up wi’ a soldier, an’ so far as I can make out he made a purtence o’ marryin’ her; got some raskil to dress up as a minister, an’ put on the ring and all. The poor maid was sure she was married honest, but she kep’ it secret, for he dared her to tell any one wi’out he gave her leave. Well, an’ now he’ve a-gone off to the war, and left a letter for her sayin’ as how ’twere all humbug, an’ they wasn’t married at all, an’ hopin’ she’d forgive en.”

“My God!” said the poor father, and he brought his hand down on the plough-handle with a force that made the mild horses start, “My God! I wish I had en here—I’d smash en!”

“An’ that’s not all,” went on Mrs. Frizzell, in a choked voice; “there’s a little ’un upon the road—our daughter ’ull be disgraced afore the whole parish.”

“Disgraced!” cried John, his honest face as red as it had before been pale, “who says disgraced! ’Tain’t no fault o’ the poor child’s! She’ve a-been deceived and used cruel hard. Nobody ’ull not have a word to say against her.”

“Won’t they, though!” retorted his wife, who, though as sore at heart as he, thought it necessary to assume an aggressive tone. “Who do you suppose ’ull ever believe as the girl ’ud be so simple as to be took in and think herself married when she warn’t married? They don’t believe it in Darchester, I can tell ’ee. There, they’ve a-gone and sent her away from her situation; and Julia—why I can see as my own cousin Julia don’t half believe her story—she’ve wrote to say she ’opes I’ll come and take her away at once, as she don’t like her for to be comin’ to the house.”

“Well, write an’ tell her as you will take her away,” returned Frizzell in a kind of muffled roar. “I bain’t ashamed o’ my child, whatever other folks may be. Write an’ tell her as Father an’ Mother ’ull be fain to have her home, and won’t let nobody worrit her when she d’ get there. I’ll soon shut their mouths if they try to make out as she bain’t a-tellin’ the trewth!”

“Now, Father, you listen to I.” And here Martha laid both her hands upon his great round shoulders and fairly shook him in her eagerness. “I bain’t a-goin’ for to let her tell the trewth—not all the trewth. I’m willin’ she should say she got married to a soldier unbeknown to us, but I don’t mean to let the rest come out. I’m goin’ for to give out as he were killed in the war. That way he’ll be done wi’, so to speak—nobody ’ull be axin’ questions about en, or wonderin’ why Susan have come home.”

John Frizzell fairly gasped.

“Bless my heart!” he ejaculated, staring at his eager little wife. “Why, what a tale! I don’t much fancy tellin’ sich a pack o’ lies; nay, now”—and he rolled his head obstinately—“I bain’t a-goin’ to tell ’em. I’ll speak the trewth, and knock down them as says contrairy—I’ll be danged if I won’t!”

“Don’t ’ee be sich a fool, Father. You’ll do jist as I tell ’ee. I’ve al’ays held up my head, and Susan, she’ve al’ays been a bit high, an’ have a-kep’ herself to herself, and there be folks as ’ud be only too glad to go a-crowin’ over we, an’ a-backbitin’ of we. I bain’t a-goin’ for to give ’em no cause. You keep your mouth shut—that’s all as you’ve got to do. Keep your mouth shut, and if folks d’ come a-worrettin’ of ’ee wi’ questions, don’t ’ee let on for to understand. You be hard enough o’ hearin’ at all times, and you can jist make out to be a bit harder. You’ll have to do as I do bid ’ee, for I’ve telled Mrs. Cross jist now the story about Susan’s husband bein’ killed in the war, and his name an’ all—”

“Why, do ’ee know his name?” interrupted Frizzell, staring at her in a puzzled sort of way. “What be his name? The young raskil! If he bain’t killed out abroad, I’ll half murder en when he do come back.”

Martha’s face assumed a set expression.

“He don’t deserve for to come back,” she said, in a tone too low for her husband to hear. “There, it bain’t Christian to wish ill to nobody, but the A’mighty be just, and I can’t think as He’d let a blessin’ rest on that there wicked fellow. I don’t know his name no more nor you,” she shouted, turning to John, who was still muttering vengeance. “Julia didn’t tell I; but when Mrs. Cross axed straight out what his name mid be, I had to say summat. I weren’t a-goin’ for to tell her as I didn’t know, so I jist thought of a name as I seed in the paper o’ Sunday among the list o’ killed—Private Griggs—so I telled her ’twas that.”

John stared at her solemnly and with unwilling admiration.

“Ye be wonderful quick at makin’ out things, and I do suppose it bain’t no use for I to go against ye; but I don’t believe no good ’ull come o’ it. Mrs. Cross be a terrible one to talk—she’ll ha’ spread the tale over village by now.”

“She will,” agreed Martha. “’Tis jist for that I did tell her. I must be gettin’ back now,” she continued, in an altered tone. “Don’t ’ee be took back when ’ee see blinds down, Father.”

“Blinds down! What’s that for?”

“Why, because Private Griggs be killed,” returned Mrs. Frizzell grimly. “They’ll ha’ to be kep’ down till I’ve a-fetched the widow home.”

“The widow!” exclaimed John. And he fairly burst out crying. “My poor little Susie! My poor maidie!”

He turned his back to his wife and stood for a moment with his shoulders convulsively heaving; then, rubbing his eyes with one horny hand, he shouted huskily to the horses, ordered his wife gruffly to stand out of the way, and started off down the hill again.

Mrs. Frizzell struck off at right angles across the field, and made for home with all possible speed. Her heart was full, nigh to bursting, and the lump in her throat caused her almost intolerable physical distress, but she resolutely forced the tears back. This was no time for crying—there was too much to be done—too much to be thought of.

* * * * *

It was about noon on the following day when Mrs. Frizzell arrived at Susan’s lodging.

The poor girl ran to meet her with an inarticulate cry, and the mother, without looking at her, began to talk rapidly in her characteristically matter-of-fact fashion.

“I be come to take ’ee home, my dear—Father an’ me think ’tis best—you’d better be gettin’ your things together. There, I did start so early as I could, but I had to go into one or two shops, and it did take I sich a time to find out this place! Ye’d best make haste and do your packing; there’s the getting back to be thought on. You can put up all as you’ve a-got ’cept your black dress—ye can slip that on. I’ve got everythin’ else as ye be like to want here.”

“My black dress!” said Susie. “’Tis too good for travellin’, mother; this here blue be quite tidy.”

“Do what I tell ’ee,” said Mrs. Frizzell, sternly, looking up from the parcel which she was unfastening, and fixing her eyes for the first time on the girl’s pale, agitated face.

“Mother, why have you got your blacks on?” cried Susan in sudden alarm. “And, oh! what’s that in your hand?”

“’Tis a bonnet, my dear, and you be to put it on. Now, Susan, I haven’t said one cross word to ’ee, and I bain’t a-goin’ to say a cross word to ’ee; and Father and me have a-made up our minds to stand by ’ee, and we’ll not let nobody go a-worrettin’ of ’ee, or a-castin’ up at ’ee about what’s past. If ye did deceive we, ye’ve a-been punished enough for’t.”

“Oh, dear! an’ that’s true,” wailed Susan; and she threw herself into her mother’s arms, her big, babyish, blue eyes drowned in tears; her poor head, with its crown of golden hair, hidden on the bosom where it had so often lain in innocent infancy. “I was a wicked girl to deceive ’ee and dear Father, as was always so good to me. But he—Jim—said I wasn’t to tell no one, or he’d be gettin’ into trouble, as we wasn’t on the strength!”

“And what mid that mean, my dear?”

“I don’t know, Mother. Some soldiers’ talk. Some of ’em has leave to get married, an’ some hasn’t.”

“Ah-h-h-h, ye mid ha’ knowed he was up to some tricks—ye couldn’t be married right that way. Why, where was your lines, my dear?”

“He said he was a-keepin’ them for me, an’ he took me to a kind o’ tin buildin’, an’ said it was the soldiers’ chapel, and he knowed I always went to chapel, so he wouldn’t ax me to be married in church; and there was another man there, as he said was the minister. And he put the ring on my finger—Jim did—he did indeed”—and here Susan raised her head to look earnestly in her mother’s face—“and he did say the words, and all.”

“There, there, no need to talk more on’t. Ye’ve been voolish, my maid, and he’ve a-been wicked; and you be left to pay for it all. But you’ve got Father and Mother to look to, and if you’ll do as I do bid ’ee, nobody need know o’ the trick as has been played on ’ee. There, slip on your dress, my dear, and pop this bonnet on, and–”

“Mother, ’tis a widow’s bonnet,” gasped Susan. “Oh, don’t—don’t make me wear a widow’s bonnet! Oh, I can’t bear the sight of en; it do seem so unlucky, so dreadful!”

“Now be still, Susan; I don’t want no idle talk about ’ee, an’ no insultin’ remarks passed, and I’ve a-made out a story and you be to keep to’t. You be the Widow Griggs—that be your name; and your husband, what was a soldier, have a-been killed in this here war.”

“Oh, not killed; not killed!” cried the girl wildly. “Oh, Mother, don’t ’ee talk like that, for I can’t a-bear it. There, ’twould seem so wicked to be sayin’ sich things—the Lard mid make it come true. I can’t but feel as Jim be my husband; whatever he’ve a-done, and so bad as he mid be, I can’t ever feel anything else. He did mean to marry I some day when he’d got leave, and he’d ha’ done it if it hadn’t ha’ been for the war. If you call me a widow, I shall feel all the time as if Jim were really killed.”

Mrs. Frizzell folded her arms and gazed at her resolutely and severely.

“Susan, don’t let me hear ’ee talk like that—the man’s dead to you if he bain’t killed, an’ his name mustn’t ever be on your lips. I’m doin’ the best I can for ’ee, an’ I can’t think the Lard ’ud be angry with me for makin’ out a story what does no harm to nobody. As for that fellow, he be in the hands o’ the Lard—the Lard ’ull see to en. I leave en to the A’mighty.”

Mrs. Frizzell spoke with a certain almost terrible significance which made poor Susie’s blood run cold.

The stronger will gained the day, and a short time afterwards the Widow Griggs, clad in her “deep,” and sobbing in a heartrending fashion that had no pretence at all about it under her long veil, was led out of the house by her resolute little mother.

Mrs. Frizzell was by nature truthful, but in this emergency it must be owned that her veracity was exposed to tests from which it did not always escape unscathed.

When one of her neighbours asked her if she did not mean to apply for relief on her daughter’s behalf from some of the funds instituted for soldiers’ widows, she could reply boldly enough that such an appeal would be useless, as Private Griggs had married without leave, and Susan’s claim would therefore not be recognised. But when the sympathetic, but exasperatingly pertinacious Mrs. Cross—the gossip who had been chosen in the first instance to spread the news of Susan’s bereavement—plied her with questions anent her departed son-in-law, the poor woman occasionally found herself so completely cornered as to be obliged to invent appropriate answers.

Thus, before very long, it became known in the village that the late Private Griggs had been a tall, dark man, very well-looking; that he came from somewhere up the country; that his mother was breaking her heart about his loss, but his father did seem to bear up very well. They didn’t write often to Susan—no, for the poor dear were that undone she couldn’t a-bear so much as to hear his name mentioned; in fact, Mrs. Frizzell herself did scarcely ever mention it to her. (“And that’s true!” remarked the originator of this history, with infinite satisfaction.) No more didn’t Frizzell—indeed, poor Frizzell were that upset about it that the less said to en the better.

Sometimes Mrs. Frizzell was a little startled when these figments were recalled to her—many of them, indeed, were so much embellished by transmission from mouth to mouth that she scarcely recognised her own original creation; but she deemed it best to let the story pass.

“Let ’em please theirselves,” she murmured. “I didn’t say so much as that, but ’tis better to let ’em think so if it do satisfy ’em. There,” she would add, when tormented by some particularly keen twinge of conscience, “’tis to be ’oped as the Lard will forgi’e me. I can’t believe as it ’ull be held agen me, seein’ as it’s for the sake of my own child.”

When poor Susan’s baby boy arrived great astonishment was elicited by the fact that the soft down which covered its little head was of a distinctly ruddy colour.

“Dear, to be sure,” remarked Mrs. Cross, “he can’t take after his father, poor, dear little hinfant. You said he was a black-haired man, didn’t you, Mrs. Frizzell? And Susan’s hair be just so yellow as the corn. I can’t call to mind as there be any red-haired folks in your family, or Frizzell’s either.”

“Very like the poor innocent do take after some o’ Mr. Griggs’ relations,” remarked another woman. “His mother, now—’tis strange how often I’ve a-known the first child be the very image o’ the father’s mother.”

Mrs. Frizzell’s hawk eyes immediately fixed themselves upon the mental picture of Private Grigg’s maternal parent, and she presently remarked, in a somewhat muffled tone, that she fancied she had heard summat about old Mrs. Griggs bein’ a red-haired woman.

“And that makes another of ’em!” she groaned to herself, “I d’ ’low I’ll soon forget what ’tis to speak the truth.”

Returning, after the departure of the visitors, to replace the little flannel-wrapped bundle by its mother’s side, she observed tentatively—

“His hair do seem to be red, Susie.”

“’Ees,” returned poor Susie faintly, “his hair be red—like Jim’s.”

“Ye mid ha’ told me that, I think!” exclaimed Mrs. Frizzell, with irrepressible irritation. “I’ve been a-tellin’ everybody as your husband were a dark-haired man. I had to make out a story now about your mother-in-law having red hair. P’r’aps she has?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. She’s dead long ago, and so is his father. Oh, Mother, how can you make up sich tales?”

“Well, I had to say summat when they axed me. If I were to say as I didn’t know, they’d be sure to guess as things wasn’t all right.”

“But if—if Jim ever do come back?” faltered the girl.

“He’ll not come back—put that out o’ your head,” said Mrs. Frizzell shortly.

The tears rolled down Susie’s face, and her eyes followed her mother’s energetic figure as it moved about the room. Once or twice she opened her lips as though to speak, but her courage failed her. Then, suddenly, the words burst from her—

“Mother, don’t ’ee pray agen him! I can feel as you’re wishin’ and wantin’ him not to come back. P’r’aps ye be a-prayin’ as—as summat may happen. Oh, don’t, don’t! ’Tis wicked.”

Mrs. Frizzell turned quite pale. She came and stood at the foot of Susie’s bed, gazing at her so oddly that the girl, who was by this time shaking with hysterical sobs, became more and more unnerved and frightened.

“There, don’t take on so,” said her mother at last, and her voice sounded husky and strange. “I mid be better nor what I am, the Lard knows, though, p’r’aps, it bain’t my own darter’s place to tell I so; but I’ve not gone so far as to pray for evil to fall on anybody, if that be what ye mean. I be a Christian woman, however wicked I mid be.”

“But you wish it,” sobbed Susan. “You know you wish it, Mother—you do wish as Jim were dead.”

“You lay down,” said Mrs. Frizzell, coming round to the side of the bed, and forcing her patient back upon her pillows. “Lay down, and keep still, and don’t go upsettin’ yourself and this poor innocent child. Leave the Lard to judge of I, as I do leave Him to judge of he.”

Susan was slowly recovering strength when one day a letter arrived containing news so consoling and yet so tragic that her heart very nearly broke.

Jim—her Jim—her husband, for as such, in spite of her mother’s protests, she continued to regard him, had written to her on the eve of battle—a manly letter, full of remorseful tenderness. Solemn thoughts had come to him out there on the lonely veldt, face to face with death. The remembrance of the innocent creature who had trusted him, and whom he had loved and wronged, haunted him perpetually. The conduct which had once seemed to him excusable now appeared to him in its true light. Moreover, his actual rough life, the hardships, the horrors of war, threw into stronger relief the happy hours which he had passed by her side; his brief glimpses of home—home of which pretty, guileless Susie had been the presiding goddess.

So, when the great fight was imminent, he had bethought him of writing to her, telling her a little of what was in his mind, announcing that he loved her still, and if God spared him to return he would do the right thing by her and make her his wife in earnest.

There, on the narrow stairs, stood the girl herself

But alas! and alas! the letter was enclosed in one written by another hand, and the poor soldier’s own unfinished missive bore a postscript of a sinister kind—a deep red-brown stain.

The writer of the enclosure—an ambulance-nurse, no doubt—related how poor Jim had been so anxious for the letter to be sent that she had despatched it as it was. At his request the envelope bore Mrs. Frizzell’s name, and for her the enclosure was intended. Would she, the writer asked, break to her daughter that Gunner Barton’s wounds were of so serious a nature that it was impossible he could recover? He had been struck and fearfully shattered by some fragments of a shell—in fact, by the time his letter reached its destination he must be dead.

Martha was standing supporting herself by the table, and vainly trying to muster up courage to face Susan, when a cry from behind her made her start and look furtively round. There, on the narrow stairs, stood the girl herself, her figure unnaturally tall in its clinging white nightdress, her eyes dilated, her pale lips apart.

Not a word could the mother say. She stood clutching the papers which fluttered in her hand.

But Susie had already seen that terrible smear, and again a cry rang through the house.

“Oh, Mother! oh, Mother! you’ve done it! You’ve got your wish—he’s dead!”

And Mrs. Frizzell, darting forward, was just in time to catch her as she fell.

But a little later, after being carried back to bed with the aid of Mrs. Cross—whom Martha prudently banished on the first sign which Susie gave of “coming to”—the poor girl wept as much with gladness as with grief.

“He did love me, Mother; you see how he did love me, and he did mean to make amends. Thank God for that! Oh, thank God for that! If he hadn’t ha’ wrote you’d never ha’ believed me; but I knew—I knew! But now I shall never see his face no more.”

And then, pressing the letter to her heart, she turned and hid her face upon the pillows, refusing to be comforted.

Mrs. Frizzell went downstairs and sank into the elbow-chair.

“Lard forgive me!” she said to herself over and over again. “Good Lard, forgive me! I can scarce think I wished en dead, but I did wish for en not to come back, and I did tell so many lies that they’ve a-come true to punish I. There, my child be a-breakin’ her heart, and ’tis me as has done it.”

By-and-bye Mrs. Cross peered in again, anxious and curious.

“What did make Susan take that bad turn, I wonder?”

“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell, looking up with red eyes, but with an odd sense of returning self-respect—this time, at least, she was telling no untruth—“it be enough to upset her. She’ve a-had a letter from her husband, wrote afore he died: so lovin’. And it be all stained wi’ blood.”

“Dear heart alive!” groaned the other sympathetically. “Poor Mr. Griggs! They took it off en after he were dead, I suppose?”

Mrs. Frizzell’s face fell. It was hard, after all, to persevere in the path of rectitude.

“’Ees,” she said faintly. “Leastways, the nurse as sent it on said he were almost gone when she took it off en.”

“Ah-h-h!” groaned the neighbour again. “Well, we do know he be dead, Mrs. Frizzell, don’t we? seein’ as his name were in the paper, and all.”

“Oh, ’ees,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, still more falteringly.

“And his blood was on the letter,” resumed Mrs. Cross, with a certain gruesome relish, though her eyes were full of tears. “Dear, now, I should like to see it. It ’ud be really summat to see, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah, but my poor Susan, she won’t let nobody look at it,” returned the mother in quick alarm. “She’ve a-got it under her pillow, and she’ve a-got fast hold on’t.”

“Poor young thing! Well, I can understand her feelings—p’r’aps some other day—”

“Nay, don’t think it, Mrs. Cross—don’t look for’t! Says she to I, ‘Mother, you won’t never let no stranger set eyes on this here. ’Twas meant for nobody but me,’ says she, and I do mean to keep it for myself.’ . . . And there’s another,” lamented the poor woman almost in despair.

“Oh, very well, mum; I’m sure I don’t want to put myself forrard where I bain’t wanted,” retorted Mrs. Cross in a tone of offended dignity. “But I thought I mid make so bold as to ax, seein’ as I’ve a-knowed your Susan since she were no bigger than her own blessed orphan child.”

“Nay, now, no offence. I don’t suppose, Mrs. Cross, as Susan ’ull so much as let Father see it. There now, talkin’ of the baby, would you like to look at en? I’ll fetch en in a minute; he be comin’ on finely.”

“Well, I haven’t seen en for two or three days—I couldn’t take much notice on en jist now when Susan seemed so bad,” returned Mrs. Cross, lingering in the hope of picking up a further crumb or two of information. “Ye don’t seem to take much notice on en yourself, my dear—I do scarcely ever see you nursin’ en.”

“I’ve a-been so taken up with Susan, d’ye see,” said Mrs. Frizzell, with a sudden pang of remorse.

She went upstairs for the child, and after he had been duly admired, and the visitor had withdrawn, she still sat looking down at the little placid face.

“Poor fellow!” she said to herself. “Poor fellow! Ah! I fancy he’d have been proud if he’d ha’ lived to come back an’ own ye, Baby. Dear, dear! they mid all ha’ been so happy—and all forgive an’ forgot. Ah! he were sorry enough, poor chap, and he did repent—the Lard ’ull ha’ mercy on him for that. . . . ’Ees, I can fancy he’d ha’ been proud if he could ha’ seen ye, Baby; but there, all of en as ’ull ever come back is them few lovin’ words and that dreadful spot o’ blood.”

And then Mrs. Frizzell fell to weeping again for pure pity, and kissed the little soft face of the dead soldier’s child and the tiny rings of ruddy gold which no father’s hand would ever stroke.

When John came in she conveyed the tidings to him in half-inarticulate shouts, between bursts of sobbing. The big dull man stood gazing at her for a moment in perturbed amazement, and then went, slowly and heavily, upstairs.

Susan still lay with her face hidden, and her slight frame heaving with convulsive sobs.

Her father paused in the doorway, and then came lumbering forward towards the bed, stooping when he reached it and patting the girl’s shoulder with his great horny, toil-worn hand.

“Don’t ’ee take on, Susie, my dear,” he murmured, blubbering too, poor fellow. “There, don’t ’ee cry, Maidie.”

“Nay, Father,” moaned Susan, “don’t ’ee call me that—don’t ’ee never call me that no more! I be a widow—I be a real widow now.”

“Ah, ’tis true,” murmured poor Frizzell indistinctly. “Ye be a widow, my poor maid—ye be a widow now, sure!”

* * * * *

But it was not so sure after all. As Mrs. Frizzell sometimes said, the most wonderfullest things did certainly happen in her family. Lo! no sooner was Private Griggs decently, and, as she imagined, finally interred than Gunner Barton took upon himself to return to life; and the complications which ensued were so bewildering that even Mrs. Frizzell was unable to cope with them. For, on the receipt of the letter which announced that Jim, though so seriously injured that he would be more or less of a cripple all his life, was indubitably recovering, and would in fact be shortly shipped home, Susan, hitherto so meek and broken, became utterly unmanageable.

She was about to set forth on some household errand when she met the postman, who informed her that he had a letter for her mother from abroad.

“Give it to me,” cried Susan quickly.

“’Tis for Mrs. Frizzell,” said the rural messenger in surprise; but the girl, with a flaming face, had already torn open the envelope.

In another moment she rent the air with strange cries and shrieks of joy.

All the inhabitants of the place came hastening forth to inquire the reason of the outcry, and there beheld the relict of Private Griggs, with her yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, and her face alight with a very passion of rapture, trampling on her widow’s bonnet, and brokenly telling her baby that Daddy was coming home.

Mrs. Frizzell rose to the emergency. Putting her arm round her daughter, she propelled her gently towards the house, without deigning to notice by word or look the importunate crowd.

Presently she went out, closing the door after her, and repossessed herself of the obnoxious bonnet, which a thoughtful neighbour had rescued from the dust and set upon a gatepost.

Before she could re-enter the house one or two anxious friends, who had been eagerly on the look-out for her from divers points of ambush, emerged from their respective doors.

“Summat very strange must have happened, Mrs. Frizzell, I’m sure, to make Susan behave as she did just now,” one said.

“Ah, I never did see nothing like it,” chimed in another.

“I’ve seen a man as was a bit drinky-like throw off his hat and tread on it, but never a respectable young ’ooman, same as Mrs. Griggs.”

“The poor thing didn’t know what she was a-doin’,” returned Mrs. Frizzell. “There, it be all so mixed up I do scarce know how to tell ye. We’ll know the right o’ things in a few days. It do seem now as if we’d ha’ made some mistake in thinkin’ Susie was a widow.”

“Lard, now, you don’t say so? Weren’t Private Griggs killed, then, after all? Why, we did see’s name in papers.”

“Them papers do make mistakes, though,” cried Mrs. Cross. “I did see oncet or twicet as they did say: ‘So-and-so, stated to be missin’, is now found to be dead,’ and t’other way round. This here be t’other way round, I suppose?”

“’Ees,” groaned Mrs. Frizzell, passing her band wearily over her brow. It was very much the other way round; the whole world, as it seemed to her, had turned completely topsy-turvy.

“Dear, I don’t wonder as poor Susan be half out of her mind. You don’t look so very well pleased yourself, my dear.”

“I scarce do know what I feel. I scarce can think it be true. If it bain’t true, what’s to become o’ Susan? As you do say, Mrs. Cross, she’s very near out o’ her mind now. And if it be true—there, them as wrote did say as he were so terrible bad he were bound to be crippled for life.”

“Crippled!” ejaculated both women together; and they looked at the mother aghast.

“Then,” cried Mrs. Cross, “Susan ’ull have en to keep!”

She exchanged a look of blank dismay with her companion; it was plain that in the eyes of both the calamity originally believed in—that of the honourable demise of Private Griggs—was regarded as a much less serious misfortune.

“And when do ye think ye’ll be likely to know for certain, my dear?” insinuated Mrs. Cross, with her head on one side.

“Well, they be a-sending somebody home, they do tell me, but whether it be Susan’s husband or not I can’t say. I suppose we’ll know as soon as he gets to England.”

“Ah-h-h, dear, it do seem a strange story, to be sure. And very likely when you do see en ye’ll find as it bain’t Private Griggs at all.”

“Very likely indeed,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, with extraordinary warmth of manner, but with a sinking heart.

* * * * *

How she contrived to keep Susan from divulging the whole story to her interested neighbours was a mystery known only to the indomitable little mother herself; for the girl, in her excited state, was for doing away at once with pretence and owning the truth to all comers. It was lucky for both that the suspense was not of long duration. A few weeks after receiving the astonishing tidings of Jim Barton’s resurrection came the news that he had arrived in England, and that he had been actually sent to the temporary hospital at the Artillery Barracks in Dorchester.

And so it came to pass that one day two women appeared in the doorway of the ward in which Gunner Barton lay, and paused for a moment as though in uncertainty. Then, with a stifled cry, the younger of the two rushed forward, past the long line of beds, where, propped on pillows, were to be seen many faces pale and drawn with pain. By the side of one—the palest of all, so pale indeed that had it not been for the red-brown eyes and auburn hair it might have been called utterly colourless—she paused and fell upon her knees. She forgot that many curious eyes were bent upon her; she forgot that she was an injured woman; and that Jim, who had wronged her, was so maimed and shattered as to be in truth a very wreck of a man; she forgot everything but that he was there, and that he loved her. And so, poor little soft foolish thing, she put her arm about his neck and laid her face upon the pillow beside his, and kissed him, and murmured incoherent words of tenderness and joy.

And Jim—poor Jim, his broken frame was so weak, and his heart so torn by gladness mingled with a piercing sorrow, that he hid his face upon her shoulder and wept like a little child.

By-and-bye Susie, throwing back her shawl, disclosed the sleeping face of the babe with a kind of shrinking pride; and Jim, with his great gaunt frame still shaking with sobs, raised himself on his one serviceable elbow and looked at him long and earnestly, though his eyes were still dim.

“I’d like,” he said, “I’d like to make all square for him and you, Susan; but ’tis puzzlin’ to know what’s right. I’m just fit for nothin’, my girl; I’ll never be fit to do a hand’s turn for myself.”

“And that’s true,” put in Mrs. Frizzell, who had been standing at the foot of the bed, wiping her eyes and sniffing violently. “’Ees, poor fellow, I can see from here where they’ve a-took off your leg. I can see quite plain that it bain’t aside of the other under the clothes.”

Susie did not hear her; her face was burning as she bent it close to Jim’s.

“I’ll not mind nothin’, Jim,” she said. “I’d be only too proud and glad to work for ’ee.”

“There’d be my pension of course,” said he. “But you’re so young, Susie; you might do better p’r’aps—if ’tweren’t for the little chap here.”

He thrust out his long, feeble hand and touched the child’s soft face, his own working with emotion the while. Wife, and child, and home—all there within the grasp of those weak hands. Could he give them up? And yet to be a burden all his days to the trusting creature, of whose ignorance he had already taken shameful advantage.

“Susie,” he whispered, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Nay,” she returned earnestly, “I do know it very well—I do ax but one thing, Jim.”

“And what’s that?”

“God’s blessin’,” said Susie; and stretching out her hand she pressed to his lips the finger which was encircled by the wedding-ring.

* * * * *

Mrs. Frizzell returned in the evening alone, it having been arranged that Susan was to remain in Dorchester until Jim was sufficiently recovered for the marriage to take place. She looked very worn and pale and tired as she turned in at her garden-gate, and was anything but gratified to find the alert Mrs. Cross on the watch for her.

“Well, my dear, so you’ve come back wi’out her! ’Twas the right man, then, after all?”

“’Ees,” returned Mrs. Frizzell faintly, “’twas the right man. And him and Susie be to set up house so soon as he gets a bit better.”

“Ah-h-h. Be he so bad, then, my dear?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Frizzell, putting down her basket and setting her arms akimbo, “he be that bad that he haven’t a-got but one leg, and not much use in that; and one of his arms be damaged. But Susan—dear! a body ’ud think there was nothin’ ever so j’yful in the world as the notion o’ keepin’ en.”

“Bless me! it do seem queer! She’ll find it ’ard work, won’t she, Mrs. Frizzell? I suppose he’ll want just so many victuals as if he were a sound man, and not be doin’ nothin’ to earn ’em.”

“Well, he’ve a-got a pension. There, don’t ’ee talk to me, Mrs. Cross, my dear. To tell ’ee the truth, I do scarce know what I be doin’. It bain’t what I did look for, d’ye see. The man himself—my daughter’s ’usband—he bain’t the man I did take en for.”

“Ye don’t tell me so!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, with a dropping jaw. “In what way be he different, Martha?”

“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell slowly, “I d’ ’low I did tell ’ee as my daughter’s ’usband were a dark man. Well, that’s one thing as I did make a mistake about—his hair be red, Mrs. Cross.”

“Red!” repeated the other, with a gasp.

“’Ees, red,” reiterated Mrs. Frizzell, assuming a stolid expression. “That be the colour on it, Mrs. Cross.”

“Well, I am surprised. To be sure, the blessed baby’s hair’s red, too—it be easy accounted for now, bain’t it? seein’ as Private Griggs’s hair be red. I wonder how you did come to make sich a mistake, Mrs. Frizzell.”

“I wonder!” said the poor woman. “My mind were fair muddled up, I do think, and I did get a lot o’ queer notions in my head. There’s another thing now; his name bain’t Griggs.”

“Lard! you do give I quite a turn. However did you come to think it were? And what mid his name be, Mrs. Frizzell?”

Mrs. Frizzell opened her mouth, shut it again, and swallowed down what seemed to be a very unpleasant morsel; finally she said, fixing her impenetrable eyes upon her neighbour’s face—

“His name be Barton—Gunner James Barton. ’Ees, that be the name.”

“Barton!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, in utter bewilderment; then, after a momentary pause, she continued—“It bain’t so very like Griggs, be it?”

For once Mrs. Frizzell’s lively imagination was at fault; she had no explanation to offer. “Nay,” she said feebly, “it bain’t.”

UP AT THE ’LOTMENTS.

Old Joseph Frisby stood at his garden gate one fine bright evening in early spring. A dirty, disreputable-looking old vagabond was he, a frequenter of the “Pure Drop,” “The True Lovers’ Knot,” “The Three Choughs,” and every such place of entertainment within reach of his tottering old legs. This evening he was perforce sober, for he had not possessed a penny that he could call his own for several months, and the landlords of the above-named hostelries had unanimously declined to give him credit. As he stooped over the rickety gate, his lean bent old figure clad in a tattered linen coat that had once been white, and nether garments of inconceivably ancient and patched corduroy, he looked forlorn and miserable enough; there was even a certain pathos in his unwashed, unshaven face, and his small bleared eyes peered anxiously out of the network of furrows which surrounded them. Every now and then he placed his hand over his ear and turned his head as though listening, and by-and-by the long expected sound for which he had been waiting made itself heard.

The back door of the neighbouring cottage closed with a bang, and a man came quickly round the house and down the tiny flagged path through the little garden, which was already bright with primroses and double daisies, and opened a gate similar to that on which Joseph was leaning. He was a wiry elderly man, with a fresh-coloured face framed in iron-grey whiskers. His garments were very much like those worn by Frisby, except that they possessed the merit of being clean. He carried a basketful of potatoes, and a spade and fork rested on his shoulder.

“Good evenin’, neighbour,” said Joseph, straightening himself, and looking eagerly at him. “Ye be goin’ up to the ’lotments, I d’ ’low?”

“Aye,” said the other, glancing round, but without slackening his pace. “I’m off to the ’lotments—pretty late, too; I must hurry.”

“Nay now, bide a bit; I want to speak to ye a minute, Jim. Lard! I’ve waited here nigh upon an hour.”

“Oh, an’ did ye?” said the man called Jim, coming unwillingly back.

“Aye. Ye see ’tis this way. Neighbour Cross, I haven’t touched a drap this three months, very near.”

“Han’t ye? Well, I’m glad on’t. I’m teetottle myself, an’ ’tis the only way to get along, I do believe. I’m truly glad to hear ye han’t had no drunks lately, Joe. Now that ye say so I do call to mind noticin’ that ye’ve been a-walkin’ uncommon straight—aye, ’tis quite a while since you was found in a ditch, ’tis sure, and ye haven’t been run in not this year, I don’t think.”

“Aye,” agreed Joseph, with modest pride. “Ye’re quite right, Jim; I haven’t been run in this year.”

He paused, rubbing his hands slowly together, and eyeing the well-filled basket of “sets”.

“We’re gettin’ help from the parish now,” he resumed, “else we couldn’t make out at all. My pore wife, ye see, she’s reg’lar crippled, an’ not able to do nothin’, an’ I’m not fit for much—I’m falterin’, neighbour, an’ farmers hereabouts has a bad opinion o’ me for some raison or another—I can scarcely ever get a day’s work.”

“’Tis very onfart’nate for ’ee, Joe; ’tis that. But yer luck will change very like. We must ’ope it will. Well, I must be gettin’ along.”

“Ye be goin’ to plant yer taters,” persisted Joseph; and stretching out his lean old hand he took hold of the basket. “Them be real fine taters, neighbour; chock-full of eyes. Lard! if I had but a few of these I’d soon plant my bit of garden.”

“Haven’t ye got none this year?” inquired Jim, visibly stiffening.

“Not a single one, an’ no cabbage neither. I’m terribly badly off this year—I don’t know however me an’ the poor body inside ’ll get on. Not a bit o’ green stuff, an’ not a set to put in the ground. Three-an’-six a week is every penny we have to look to, an’ ye may think it don’t go very far. Bread an’ tea, bread an’ tea, an’ not so much as a drop o’ milk to’t. My missus, she’s that cute along o’ me likin’ a drap now and then, she wouldn’t let the Union folk give it us in money—we jest hev an order for half a pound o’ tea once a week, an’ we takes out the rest in bread. Ah dear! a body has to be clever to live on it, I can tell ’ee.”

He paused, leered insinuatingly in his neighbour’s face, and finally murmured, still fingering the basket: “If ye was to let me have a few of these now, neighbour, I could pay ye back i’ th’ autumn.”

Jim dexterously twisted his property away from the trembling hand.

“So that’s what ye’re at!” he cried. “Nay, nay, Joe; I’ve had enough o’ your payin’ back. I know what that manes. You an’ yer missus ’ud make yer dinner off ’em, if ye didn’t chop the lot for a drink straight off.”

“No, no,” pleaded Joe, almost tearfully; “’tis too bad to say such things, and take a pore man’s character away. I’ll gi’e ye me Bible oath—dang me, an’ everythin’ reg’lar by the Book—that I’d put ’em straight in the ground, Jim Cross.”

“Well, I can’t spare the taters, anyhow,” grumbled Jim. “I’m a pore man an’ have to purvide for mysel’ an’ my family. I’m sorry I can’t obleege ye, but so ’tis.”

He walked off, leaving poor old Joe staring blankly after him.

By and by a light quick tread was heard approaching from the opposite direction, and a dapper-looking young fellow rounded the corner of the lane, whistling to himself as he advanced. He, too, carried a fork, and a half-filled sack was flung over his shoulder.

“Goin’ up to the ’lotments?” inquired Joseph falteringly.

“Yes, I’ve jest knocked off work, an’ am goin’ up there for an hour or two before dark. Fine evenin’, Mr. Frisby.”

“Aye, sure,” said Joseph. “Ye’ve got a grand sackful there, Jan.”

“’Tis a big piece to fill up, Mr. Frisby. We han’t got above half enough o’ our own. We’ll have to buy some.”

“I haven’t got one to put in my bit o’ ground,” said Joseph impressively. “What do ye think of that, Jan Domeny? Not one; no, nor not so much as a stalk o’ cabbage.”

“Well now,” said Jan, “’tis very sad, that, Mr. Frisby. A sorrowful tale, indeed. May-hap Parson ’ud help ye.”

“Nay,” returned Joseph lugubriously; “we be chapel folk, an’ Parson he says he han’t got no faith in me.”

“Well, ’tis terrible onfart’nate for ’ee, I’m sure,” returned Mr. Domeny unconcernedly. “But bad times can’t laist for ever. There’s comfort in that, Mr. Frisby. The Lard trumpets the wind to the sore lamb, as Scriptur’ says.”

Having delivered himself of this edifying aphorism, young Jan Domeny hoisted his sack a little higher up on his shoulder, and strode on.

“They be all alike,” muttered Joe to himself; “they be a stony-hearted lot. Not one among ’em ’ud gi’e a man a helpin’ hand. Dang ’em all!” cried Joe, and he thumped upon the gate.

He turned and shuffled slowly towards the house, pushing open the door. A little old woman was sitting, propped up by pillows, in an armchair near the hearth. She was almost crippled by rheumatism, yet managed in some inexplicable way to preserve a tolerable appearance of neatness and cleanliness, both in her own person and in such of her surroundings as came within reach of her poor distorted fingers. The hearth was tidy, for instance, and the kitchen utensils and crockery on the little dresser behind her chair were bright and clean. It must be supposed that her husband, who would have been much the better for a share of her attention, kept himself systematically out of reach.

“Well?” she inquired, eagerly looking up as he entered.

“Well, ’tain’t a bit o’ use. They’ll none o’ them do a thing for me.”

Mrs. Frisby sighed. “Come, sit down anyhow,” she said. “Supper’s ready, an’ the tea’s drawed beautiful.”

Joe shambled over and sat down. His wife, leaning painfully forward in her chair, moved the little brown teapot from the hob to the table, and then, stooping again with yet more difficulty, took up a plateful of dry toast and proffered it to the old man.

“There!” she said. “I made ye that for a bit of a change. The fire was burnin’ up so clear an’ nice, I jest thought I’d do it. ’Twill be a nice change for ’ee, Joseph—’twill sure.”

She spoke in a high quavering voice, peering anxiously the while at her spouse.

He took a piece of toast and turned it over; then broke off a bit and flung it on the table.

“’Tis as hard as flint, woman,” he said indignantly. “Where d’ye think I can find teeth to bite en?”

“Nay now, ’tis not so ’ard as that comes to,” urged she. “I can bite en, an’ I han’t got a single tooth left. Sop it in yer tea, do ’ee now, an’ it’ll slip down nice.”

“Slip down, indeed! It ’ud want a bit o’ butter, or a bit o’ graise for that. But here us be—two old ancient folks as has lived in this parish man an’ wife for fifty-two year, an’ they’ll not so much as gi’e us a tater.”

“They’ll not so much as gi’e us a tater”

“Yes a tater ’ud be nice, sure,” quavered the old woman. “It ’ud be very nice.”

“Or a bit o’ green stuff ’ud be nice,” went on Frisby emphatically. “I could eat this bread if they’d gi’e I a bit o’ green to put to’t. But no, ’tis ‘Go away, I’ve nothin’ for ’ee’ all round. There’s every man an’ bwoy in the place workin’ up at the ’lotments, gettin’ the taters into the ground as fast as ever they can stick ’em. If they was to gi’e us half a dozen each they’d never miss it, an’ I could get my bit ’o ground planted up. But no, they be all took up wi’ theirselves—never a thought for we.”

Mrs. Frisby rubbed her shrivelled hands together, and sighed.

“Ah, ’tis hard,” she said; “’tis hard, sure.”

And then silence fell between the old couple, and each consumed their meagre fare without any great appearance of appetite.

Presently Joseph set down his cup, pushed back his chair, and stood up.

“Where be goin’?” asked his wife querulously. “I never seed such a fidget of a man.”

“I’m goin’ up to the ’lotments,” he responded curtly.

“Laive me a pail o’ water first, do, so as I can be washin’ up. I reckoned ye’d ha’ helped me a bit to-night—rheumatics is terrible bad.”

Joseph took up the pail without a word and went out; presently an excruciating creaking and squeaking was heard as he turned the rusty handle of the windlass.

After some time he hobbled back, the water splashing from the overflowing bucket at every step.

“Dear! what a mess the man d’ make!” groaned Mrs. Frisby. “Carry it studdy, for the Lard’s sake. Now sit down, do ’ee, an’ gi’e me a hand.”

“Nay, I’m off,” responded her lord in surly tones; and in another moment the garden gate creaked on its hinges, and his departing steps fell heavily on the lane outside.

This somewhat circuitous path led first past a horse-pond, then skirted the beautifully kept churchyard, with the ancient, ivy-grown edifice in the centre. Then it darted off at an abrupt angle, apparently to avoid encroaching on the farm premises in the rear of the church, where the picturesque building which had once been a tithe-barn was now devoted to humbler purposes. The lane ceased at its junction with the high road, but crossing the latter, and following the footpath for a little way, Joseph came to another lane which, after a few hundred yards, became a steep ascent.

The blackthorn was still in flower here and there in the hedges, which accounted, as the country folk would have said, for the peculiarly keen and chilly quality of the evening blast; but the twisted twigs of the more genial hawthorn were powdered, as it were, with a delicate dust of green. Trailing tendrils of honeysuckle were already in full leaf, and young saplings of elder stretched out slender bare limbs tufted at the ends with crimson. Downy catkins, moreover, on many a willow bough gave further promise of the rapid approach of the “Sweet o’ the Year;” and there were violets in the banks, and here and there a patch of primroses; and a glory of dandelions everywhere.

But poor old Joe Frisby, as he toiled painfully up the stony incline, had no eye for any of these trivialities; his mind was set upon more weighty matters—he was bent, indeed, upon nothing less important than an appeal to the community at large. Singly the neighbours had rejected and despised his petition; taken collectively they might, for very shame’s sake, be moved to grant it. No man, as Joseph dimly felt, likes his individual generosity to be overmuch counted upon; but a whole community—each member making quite sure that his neighbour does as much as he—may sometimes be persuaded to accede to a claim which all alike acknowledge.

Now voices fell upon his ear, accompanied by the sound of spades at work. An opening in the hedge revealed a gate towards which Joseph made his way. On the other side lay the allotments; narrow strips of ground, most of which were already broken up into brown ridges, while a few were still encumbered with the lingering stalks of last year’s cabbages, or an untidy growth of weeds. On this propitious evening the place seemed alive with men and women; some delving, some hoeing, some cutting up the “sets”—not a patch of ground but had its occupant. Every one was busy and every one seemed merry. Jan Domeny, with coat flung off and shirt-sleeves rolled high, was lustily chanting a three-year-old music-hall ditty, which had just found its way to Dorset. Further away the bent back of Jim Cross formed a moving arch against the sky-line; a grandchild had joined him, and was trotting along beside him carrying the basket of potatoes.

Joseph stood leaning over the gate for a little while, his eyes travelling slowly from one group to another; after long hesitation he passed in and walked deliberately up the grassy track which divided two batches of the allotments. Many of the workers looked up a moment with a word or nod of recognition, and Joseph nodded back, paused as if to speak, hesitated, and then went on. At last he reached the centre of the ground, and there came to a halt. He took off his battered hat, flourished it to attract attention, and began, pitching his quavering voice as high as he could:—

“Neighbours all, I’ve summat to say to ’ee.”

“Hello!” cried the man nearest to him, straightening himself and staring. “Here’s old Joe Frisby turned Methody praicher.”

“Nay, he’ve a-jined the Salvation Army, sure,” cried another, who was himself a regular subscriber to the “War Cry”.

“I know what he’s after,” muttered Jan, working away very diligently. “Don’t you take no heed, none of you.”

“I’ve been countin’ of ye up,” pursued Joseph, leaning on his stick and looking nervously round. “Here be twenty chaps workin’ in the ’lotments; aye, twenty chaps, not reckonin’ women and childern, an’ ye be all puttin’ in taters. An’ here am I wi’ my garden at home waitin’ to be planted, an’ not a bit o’ seed to put in it.”

“I telled ’ee, didn’t I?” muttered Jan to his nearest neighbour. “I knowed ’twas that he was at.”

“I’ve lived among ye man and bwoy for seventy-five year. Aye, an’ my wife an’ me has been wed among ye fifty-two year. There she d’ sit at home crippled, poor soul. We’ve nought in the world but what parish gives us. Half a pound o’ tea a week, an’ some bread. Bread an’ tea, neighbours, bread an’ tea; ’tisn’t very satisfyin’ to the innards. Me an’ my wife was never great folks for mate, but we d’ like a tater to our dinner, or a bit o’ green stuff. An’ so I’ve a-bin thinkin’—”

He looked round again, hesitatingly and pitifully.

“’Tis a mortal sight o’ taters as is here among ye between one an’ another—aye, a mortal lot. I d’ ’low”—again the pause and the appealing glance—“if every man ’ud spare me a few like I’d get two or three ranks made up without any of ye bein’ at much loss.”

The bystanders looked at each other, then each man glanced involuntarily at his own store. None of them were over well endowed with this world’s goods, and the calculations of each had been made to a nicety. Old Jim Cross continued to work without turning his head, and Jan Domeny smiled somewhat sarcastically.

“Why, ye see ’tis this way, Joseph,” said a large mild man, with an habitually puzzled expression of countenance; “we be pore folks, all on us; we’ve a many little mouths to feed, an’ not much to put in ’em. An’ what wi’ prices goin’ up an’ rent day a-comin’ round so often like, a man’s hand d’ seem to be always in his pocket, an’ it’s give, give, an’ pay, pay, ever an’ always, d’ye see? Now my taters,” he cast a calculating eye upon the half-filled sack at his feet, “they’ll not go so far to make up three ranks for ourselves, an’ three ranks is the least we can do wi’. Aye, wi’ a houseful of growin’ childern taters d’ last—well, I mid say they lasses next to no time.”

His hearers drew a long breath of relief. If Ed’ard Boyt, who was well known to be a poor man with a long family, had been imprudently generous, what might not be expected of other folks who might be supposed better able to afford him assistance?

“Aye, ’tis very true what Ed’ard says. Charity d’ begin at home. It ’ud seem a bit ’ard to go a-buyin’ for oneself along of helpin’ a neighbour,” said somebody.

“Aye, I d’ ’low ’tis true,” agreed another.

“True enough, sure!” chimed in a third.

“We be sarry for ’ee,” summed up a fourth; “aye, we be very sarry for ’ee, Joseph, but ’tis the onfart’nate natur’ o’ things as pore folks d’ have to do the best they can.”

Then, amid a general chorus of regretful approval, spades were plied, and backs were bent as before.

Joe shambled back to the gate again, and stood for some time leaning over it and staring at the toilers. His face was very red, and his loose irregular under-lip trembled. A few furtive glances were cast in his direction, but no one spoke, and after a time he turned and went down the lane again, his bent form, clad in its shabby white coat, travelling slowly past gap after gap in the hedge until it drifted out of the range of vision of the workers. As he walked, however, his heart was hot within him with rage and disappointment and a bitter sense of injustice.

“They’ll lave me to starve,” he said to himself; “an’ I’ve a-lived among ’em for seventy-five year.”

His sense of injury deepened each time that he recalled this fact, and he shook his head vengefully.

As he tottered on his resentment gradually suggested to him a startling plan of action. He thought of it all the way down the lane and across the road, and along by the tithe-barn and the church, and by the time he came to the horse-pond his mind was made up.

“A man must live,” he said. “If other folks won’t help en he must help hisself.”

There was a fine moon that night, and had any one been abroad an hour or so after midnight, he would have marked a white shape creeping slowly up the lane which led to the allotments, and presently entering in at the gate already described, and moving from one newly planted patch of ground to another.

“Only three from Ed’ard because he’ve a-spoke me fair,” murmured Joseph to himself; “an’ I’ll not take ’em altogether, neither. I wouldn’t lave the pore chap wi’ a great gap in the rank.”

Joseph dropped something carefully into the sack which he carried over his arm, and then he drew together the disturbed clods and patted them down. Then waddling along with his legs across the drill he cautiously removed another “set,” and then another.

“That’ll do for Ed’ard,” he muttered. “’Tis for feedin’ the pore, so the Lard’ll make it up to en. Now, Jan, I’ll take a good few from ’ee, because ye be a danged ’ard-’arted chap. An’ I don’t care where I d’ take ’em, nor if it do make gaps—nay, that I don’t. Ye’ve a-sowed, an’ ye’ve a-watered, so to speak, Jan, but I d’ ’low that it’ll sarve ’ee right if the Lard don’t give ’ee no increase.”

He unearthed the “sets,” taking every precaution, however, to make the ground look undisturbed. He went the rounds, in fact, till his sack was nearly full, and then beat a retreat, carrying home his booty unobserved.

It chanced that Jim Cross, waking with the dawn, fancied he heard the sound of a spade in the next garden. On his way to work, a little later on, he observed that a goodly portion of Joseph’s patch of ground was indeed freshly dug up. Joseph was standing by the gate as usual, and nodded affably as his neighbour passed.

“I see ye’ve a-bin diggin’,” remarked Jim, pausing with a surprised expression. “Looks as if ye was a-gettin’ the ground ready for taters.”

“Well, an’ maybe I am a-gettin’ the ground ready for taters,” returned Joseph warmly. “I puts my trust where trust be due. My fellow-creatur’s have a-turned their backs on me, so I looks to the Lard. Aye,” repeated Joseph, turning up his eyes piously, “I looks to the Lard for ’elp, Jim Cross. The Lard’ll purvide.”

Jim was much impressed.

“I’ve put me trust in Providence,” pursued Joseph, peering at him cautiously out of the corner of his eye; “and to show as I’ve a-put my trust in Providence, I’m a-gettin’ ready my bit o’ ground. When the Lard sends me them taters, neighbour, he’ll find I ready.”

Jim looked hard at him, and Joseph folded his arms and looked back steadily and mildly.

“I don’t bear ’ee no grudge, Jim,” he went on. “I don’t bear nobody no grudge, but I do put my trust in the Lard.”

Jim went on his way, scratching his head from time to time, and casting back sundry furtive glances at his neighbour, who suddenly appeared to him in a new and impressive light.

When he disappeared Joseph went back to his digging, his countenance still wearing an expression of aggrieved virtue. After much pondering on his own conduct, and the circumstances which had led up to it, he had come to look upon himself rather in the light of a martyr, and to consider his recent action not only justifiable, but in a certain sense inspired. He was, therefore, scarcely surprised when, late that evening, Jim Cross came up to him with a deprecating air.

“Me an’ a few of ’em yonder have been a-talkin’ about you, Joseph,” he remarked.

“Have ye?” responded Joseph, with an air of lordly unconcern.

“Aye. We was sayin’ it did seem a bit ’ard to disapp’int ’ee like, when you was so trustful an’ patient, so we agreed as we’d try an’ spare ’ee a few ‘sets’ between us. As I did say, the Lard’ll make it up to we; an’ I d’ think He will, neighbour.”

“He will, sure,” agreed Joseph solemnly, as he held out his grimy hand for the basket which Jim respectfully tendered him.

Next came Ed’ard Boyt with a small, a very small bagful, but a heart overflowing with good-will. Joseph thanked him for his contribution almost with the air of one bestowing a benediction.

“’Tis very well done of ’ee, Ed’ard; an’ ye’ll not be no loser. Nay, you’ll see how things ’ll turn out wi’ ye.”

One after another they came, ending with Jan Domeny, whom Frisby received a little distantly, but on the whole forgivingly.

“’Tis but a pore lot as ye’ve brought me, Jan. I d’ ’low as Ed’ard Boyt have done better nor you. Aye, he’ve done very well for he, such a pore man as he be, an’ such a long fam’ly as he have.”

“Why, we’ve a-had to buy, Mr. Frisby,” returned Jan apologetically. “But there, I’ll see if we can spare a few more, an’ fetch ’em round to-morrow.”

“To-morrow ’ll do very well,” agreed Joseph generously; and so they parted.

Then Frisby fell to work with a joyful heart, setting out first of all the potatoes which he had purloined, and which he had originally designed to plant surreptitiously by night, intending, when the first shoots made their appearance, to assure his neighbours that they had sprung miraculously from the ground. This was better: moreover the second edition of “sets” was much larger than the first, and he now found himself in a position to stock his entire garden.

“The Lard ’elps them as ’elps theirselves,” he said to himself once more, as he waded solemnly up and down the drills.

From that day forward Joseph Frisby was respected by all the village folk. He had “got religion,” to begin with—more religion than anybody had credited him with, and he had evidently been singled out by Heaven for special favours. His crop prospered wonderfully; people were quite amazed to see the marvellous return made by their contributions, and were the more astonished because other small producers had not found it such a very good year for taters. There were many gaps among the ranks at the allotments, and it was noticeable that Jan Domeny, in particular, had suffered severely.

No one was more loud in commiserating this misfortune than Joseph Frisby.

“The ways of Providence be wonderful, as the Scriptur’s say, Jan Domeny,” he remarked one day. “Aye, ’tis what I often d’ say to myself: a man may plant and a man may water, but ’tis the Lard as gives the increase.”

“Well,” returned Jan, a little grudgingly, “I d’ ’low that He’ve a-gi’ed it to you, Mr. Frisby.”

“He have, Jan; He have!” agreed Joseph heartily.

“THE ONLY SOLDIER.”

A little group of houses nestling in the hollow near the church, about half a mile from the village proper; all with tiled roofs more or less the worse for wear, and in consequence highly picturesque, tiny patches of flower-garden in front, and larger strips, devoted to vegetables, in the rear. Some of these cottages stood back to back, others retired a little from their fellows, and one shot out at a bold angle from its neighbour with a certain independent air which was increased by the rakish poise of its somewhat dilapidated chimney.

As the hands of the ancient grandfather’s clock in this last-named dwelling-house approached the hour of noon, a short, spare, elderly woman threw open the door and took up her position on the carefully whitened step. She looked expectantly up the road in the direction of the village, and of the town beyond.

Presently another couple of doors were thrown back, and two additional figures—the figures of Mrs. Stuckhey’s nearest neighbours—also emerged into the open and cast glances of anticipation in the same direction.

The coincidence seemed to strike one of the party, a fat woman with a good-humoured face and untidy wisps of greyish hair escaping from the control of the solitary and crooked brass hairpin which was supposed to keep them in their place.

“We be all on the look-out, we mid say,” she remarked. “I be awaitin’ for the childern. ’Tis time they were home from school. I have to send David on a message before he goes back after dinner.”

“My son d’ seen to be a bit late too,” chimed in the lady whose doorstep was parallel to that of the last speaker; a somewhat vixenish-looking person this, with a pinched and pointed nose, and a sour mouth that seldom smiled. “He be kept awful busy up at the line,” she continued fretfully. “He do seem to work twice so hard as he did since that there old war began. I d’ wish it was ended, that I do.”

“There’s more than you wishes that, Mrs. Woolridge,” said the owner of the independent house, folding her arms and holding up her head with a certain assumption of dignity. “Them that has friends out there—them that has sons out there, they be the folks as wish the war was well over; and they do do it, Mrs. Woolridge—I d’ ’low they do.”

“An’ so they may,” retorted Mrs. Woolridge acidly. “I’m sure I can’t think what ever makes folks go to be soldiers! I wouldn’t have my son a soldier—no, not if he was to go down on his bended knees I wouldn’t agree.”

“Well, I don’t go so far as that,” returned Mrs. Stuckhey. “It d’ seem a bit hard, I d’ ’low, to part wi’ ’em; but ’tis a fine thing for to serve Queen and country, and I d’ feel so to speak proud o’ my Joe. E-es, I mid say I am proud of him! It’s summat, after all, to think as he’s the only soldier in the place—the only soldier in Riverton.”

“An’ a good job too,” retorted Mrs. Woolridge; “I’m glad there bain’t no more on ’em. If there wasn’t no soldiers there wouldn’t be no wars; and to my mind wars is wicked things—reg’lar flying in the face o’ Providence.”

“Nay, now,” put in good-natured Mrs. Blanchard, “I’m sure everybody, high and low, the gentry and sich as we together, all d’ seem to think the world o’ the soldiers. And it be quite natural as you should feel a bit proud, Mrs. Stuckhey, my dear, seeing as your son is the only soldier as comes fro’ this here village. Why, we was a-prayin’ for the soldiers to-week, Mrs. Woolridge, so I can’t think as war can be anyways wicked.”

“E-es, indeed,” agreed Susan Stuckhey, addressing herself pointedly to the last speaker, for she had been somewhat hurt by Mrs. Woolridge’s remarks. “I d’ ’low I could very near ha’ cried o’ Sunday, when the service was gi’ed out for the soldiers, seein’ as all the prayers in this place was a-goin’ up for my Joe. I went round to the rectory afterwards, and I did thank the Reverend. ‘’Tis very kind o’ ye, I’m sure, sir,’ says I, ‘to take so much trouble for my son.’ ‘What trouble, Susan?’ says he, looking a bit dazy like. ‘Why, the service, sir,’ says I. ‘All the long prayers, and the collect, and all—for our soldiers, you know. My Joe be the only soldier from Riverton.’ So now when he do meet me he do al’ays ax, ‘Any noos, Susan, from our only soldier?’ That reminds me, postman be late to-day, bain’t he? The mail do come in from abroad to-day, d’ye see, and I’m on the look-out for a letter.”

Mrs. Blanchard and Mrs. Stuckhey craned their heads once more, peering anxiously up the road; but Mrs. Woolridge remained ostentatiously immovable.

“I thought that was what fetched you out,” she remarked ungraciously. “I suppose you’ll ’low as postmen be o’ some use. It d’ seem to me as they d’ serve their country just so well as soldiers; and there’s others as serves their country too. I reckon as my son Robert d’ serve his country better nor any soldier. What ’ud the country do wi’out trains?”

Mrs. Stuckhey smiled pityingly, and replied in a tone of dignified amusement, “They be useful too, no doubt, in their way; but ye’ll hear different to your notion, Mrs. Woolridge. ‘Soldiers of the Queen,’ you know: they stand high, d’ye see—more partic’lar jest now. ‘Your country’s love to you!’—nobody wouldn’t go for to say that to a postman, would they now? nor yet to a man what was workin’ on the line.”

“And that’s true,” agreed Mrs. Blanchard.

Mrs. Woolridge tossed her head.

“Well, I think there’s a deal too much fuss made about them soldiers,” she said—“not meanin’ your son in partic’lar, Mrs. Stuckhey, but the lot of ’em; and I can’t think as the Lard’s blessin’ can rest on this here war. It d’ stand to reason as it can’t—sendin’ up the price o’ everythin’, and makin’ it so hard for the poor to live. Why, the very price o’ coal be doubled very near. Don’t tell me as the A’mighty can approve o’ that.”

A faint colour overspread the sallow cheek of the soldier’s mother, and there is no knowing how severe might have been her retort had not the long-expected form of the one-armed postman chanced to round the corner at this juncture, escorted by some five or six juvenile Blanchards.

As he drew near he was observed to fumble in his bag, and presently halted before the group of matrons, his face wreathed with smiles.

“I’ve got summat for ’ee to-day, Mrs. Stuckhey. Noos fro’ the front; a letter fro’ the soldier.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Susan, and her small black eyes twinkled as she thrust forward an eager hand.

The postman detached one letter from the packet which he drew forth from his bag, and, after it had passed from his possession, proceeded to tighten the string which was tied round the remainder, his teeth coming very deftly to the assistance of his fingers.

“He be with Buller, bain’t he?” he inquired, casting a sidelong glance at the mother as she hastily unfastened the envelope.

“E-es, he’s wi’ Mr. Buller,” corrected Mrs. Stuckhey.

“Mr. Buller! Be that what ye d’ call him?” and the postman’s keen eyes twinkled.

“Well, it do seem more respectful like for I. Joe, he do say the General; but it seems more natural for me to say Mr. Buller.”

“I thought it was Lord Buller,” observed Mrs. Blanchard doubtfully.

“Well, never mind; Buller’s enough for I,” said the postman. “Does your son chance to say if they’re pretty near Ladysmith now?”

His much-frayed string seemed somewhat knotted, and opportunities of hearing news direct from the front were sufficiently rare to justify a little extra care in disentangling it.

Mrs. Stuckhey drew forth and unfolded the missive, and her audience duly composed themselves. Even Mrs. Woolridge was conscious of a certain unwilling interest which she endeavoured to disguise by an attitude of indifference—head thrown back, nose screwed up, hands planted negligently on hips.

“My dear Mother,” read Mrs. Stuckhey, “It is with the greatest of pleasure that I write these few lines hoping you are well as it leaves me at present.”

This was merely the formula by which Soldier Joe, who was a person of some education, considered it necessary to inaugurate his letters; and the information which it ostensibly conveyed was not intended to be taken literally, as was proved by the fact that on one occasion this conventional statement had been immediately followed by the announcement that he was wounded and in hospital.

“I have got Back to the front Again and we are going to make another start for Ladysmith before long.”

“Why, I thought they was close to Ladysmith by now,” interrupted the postman. “The papers said yesterday they was but eight mile away.”

“Ah, you can’t trust them papers,” said Mrs. Blanchard in a tone of conviction. “They do exaggerate, them papers; they just prints a lot o’ lies in ’em to make ’em sell.”

“Very like your son have made a mistake,” observed Mrs. Woolridge loftily. “Joe, he’s but young.”

“Well, it stands to reason as them that’s on the spot must know better what’s goin’ on nor them that’s miles an’ miles away,” retorted Mrs. Stuckhey with some heat. “This here noos comes direct.”

It did not seem to occur to any one that the tidings in question were three weeks old.

She fell to the reading of her letter again, spelling out the words slowly, and running the sentences one into another; indeed it might have been a little difficult to do otherwise, for Joe used capital letters impartially, and absolutely disdained stops.

“You may bet there won’t be no turning Back this time I hope you are saving the Papers for me and I hope when Ladysmith is Relieved you will hang out a Flag and give us Three cheers we deserve it I can Tell you dear Mother when the bullets are whistling round you it is not exactly Pleasant but they don’t like the cold Steel and I hope we shall get near enough to give them that I should like a Dig at the man what shot me give my best Love to Maria and Jane I Fancy you was all thinking of me on Christmas day I hope you had Roast beef and enjoyed yourselves we had only a Dirty old stew in hospital it will be a Good day when I come home you must have a Ox ready and as many spuds as would grow in the garden for two or three years dear Mother I think there is no more this time give my love to all friends and don’t Forget the Flag.

“From your loving son,

“Joseph Stuckhey.”

“Ah!” commented the mother, wiping her eyes, “I d’ ’low we did think o’ him on Christmas Day. Maria—that’s my maid what’s in service at Bourne—she were here for her holiday; and Jane, my married daughter, you know, she come over wi’ her husband and childern. We’d ha’ been a merry party if Joe’d been here; but we did talk of him a’most wi’ every mouthful.”

The postman finished tying the last knot, and slung his bag round under his empty sleeve.

“I must be getting on,” he said. He would repeat items from Joe Stuckhey’s letter in the various villages through which he passed in making his round.

“Well, to be sure, ’tis nice to hear direct,” observed Mrs. Blanchard, slowly backing into her house, and almost tumbling over two of three of her offspring as she did so.

Mrs. Woolridge sniffed, scratched her elbows with an absent air, cast another frowning glance up the road, and finding her son was not in sight betook herself indoors.

The soldier’s mother went in too, sat down to her dinner—a cold one, for, being a washerwoman by profession, Monday was a busy day with her, and she would not waste time even in boiling herself a “spud” or two. She spread out Joe’s letter on the table and meditated over it while she ate.

“I’ll get a flag,” she said to herself. “E-es, I must get a little flag. And when my Joe do come back he shall have as good a bit of roast beef as I can buy, bless him!”

As she went about her work that day her gaze wandered, even more frequently than usual, to Joe’s portrait, which hung in a prominent position over the mantelpiece. This work of art had been presented by the young soldier to his mother soon after he had enlisted. He had not spared expense, and the result, though somewhat wooden in attitude and uneasy in expression, was eminently satisfactory to her.

While she wrung out her clothes or hung them on the line she crooned to herself the refrain of the popular ditty, “Tommy Atkins,” altering the name of the hero to suit her own taste:—

“Oh-h, Joey, Joey Stuckhey,
You’re a good one, heart and hand,
You’re a credit to your country,
And to all your native land.
May your luck be never-failing,
May your love be ever true—

“And that it will, I’ll be bound; there never were a more lovin’ lad. How he did hug I, to be sure, afore he left last time.”

It will be observed that Susan’s reading of the line was not quite the same as that intended by the author of the song. She wiped her eyes, sighed, and resumed with renewed energy:—

“May your luck be never-failing,
May your love be ever true.
God bless you, Joey Stuckhey,
Here’s your country’s lo-o-o-o-ve to you!”

She threw so much expression into the last line that the word love expanded into a polysyllable.

A few days later news flew round the parish that Ladysmith had actually been relieved; the authority vouched for being no less than that of her Majesty the Queen. The baker brought the news to Riverton. His eyes appeared ready to jump from his head with excitement as he made the announcement.

“You’ll be hearin’ bells a-ringin’ to-night,” he said. “Ah, they be runnin’ up flags all over the place a’ready. And they do say as they be a-goin’ to ’luminate.”

“Flags!” ejaculated Mrs. Stuckhey. “I must get a flag at once. I’ll start so soon as I’ve a-had my tea. I wish I’d a-got it afore; but my son—him that’s the only soldier here, you know, baker—he did say when he last wrote as they was but startin’ to relieve Ladysmith.”

“I can scarce believe as the noos be true,” observed pessimistic Mrs. Woolridge. “I wouldn’t be in too great a hurry to get that flag if I was you.”

“Well, I should think the Queen ought to know,” retorted her neighbour with spirit. “I’m a-goin’ to get it, anyhow.”

“I’ll go along with ’ee, my dear,” cried Mrs. Blanchard, who was always ready for an outing. “I can’t afford no flags myself, but I’m sure I wish ’ee well, an’ am pleased at your son’s success. I’ve only got to give the childern their tea, and clean me a bit, and put on bonnet and shawl, and I’ll be ready.”

The baker’s cart jolted away and the two women hastened indoors. It took Mrs. Blanchard some time to complete her preparations, and it was past six o’clock by the time they reached the little town.

The market-place presented an unusually gay appearance: bunting floated from the church tower, the Corn Exchange, and all the principal buildings; rows of light were already appearing in many of the windows; groups of people stood about, laughing, talking, singing; many of them cheered as newcomers arrived upon the scene and were told the news.

Mrs. Stuckhey and her friend, having purchased the flag, attached themselves to one of the groups in question, and heard how the tidings had first come “down the line,” and how, subsequently, a telegram had arrived at the Royal George. Mrs. Stuckhey was in the act of expatiating on the information conveyed in her son’s letter when, with a mighty clang, the bells rang out.

“They’re at it,” cried a man, detaching himself from the knot of people the better to flourish his hat. “Three cheers for Buller and White. Hip—hip—hip—”

“Hurray!” roared the crowd.

Cling, cling, clang! chimed the bells.

Then all at once, no one knew how, the merry-making ceased, the cheerful jangling came to an end, the ringers loosing the ropes so suddenly that the bells continued to swing for some little time longer, sending forth occasional slow faint notes of most funereal sound. As anxious glances sought the church tower the flag was seen to have disappeared; moreover, it was observed that the kindred trophy which had proudly surmounted the Corn Exchange was being hauled down. What had happened—what was wrong?

The disappointing news soon flew from mouth to mouth: it was all a mistake. Ladysmith was not relieved after all. Someone had just telegraphed from London to say that there was no foundation for the report. The War Office had, in fact, declared it to be false.

“’Tis my belief as that there War Office don’t know so very much,” remarked Mrs. Stuckhey, indignant in her disappointment. “When my son Joe was wounded they did send me a very nice letter, to be sure—Lord Lansdowne I believe it was from, and a beautiful hand his lordship do write—but he didn’t tell I nothin’ about it—not whether ’twas in his arm, or leg, or nowhere in partic’lar. So there, I just sent him a telegraft to ax how my son were, and he never took no notice. Don’t ’ee tell I as he knows what’s going forrard better nor the Queen.”

“Well, but they do say now as the Queen didn’t say nothin’,” said somebody ruefully.

The lights were being blown out, the flags removed; people were returning homewards. Mrs. Stuckhey, still unconvinced and irate, was constrained to follow their example, clutching her little sixpenny flag in its paper wrapper.

“Lard! how awful molloncolly that there bell do sound,” groaned Mrs. Blanchard dolefully. “Dear, to be sure, a body mid think as it were tollin’ for a funeral.”

“There, my dear, don’t ’ee talk so foolish,” responded Susan with some acerbity. “’Tis but the ringers as has left the ropes a-swingin’. I should be ashamed, Mary Blanchard, to go a-givin’ way like that, and you with all them childern, as ought to know better.”

“I be that nervish, d’ye see. Lard, I do feel shaky all over. I have a kind o’ porsentiment as summat have a-happened—that I have, and I can’t say no different, Mrs. Stuckhey, not if it be to please you.”

At this moment the pair were overtaken by a stout, elderly man, who, recognising them as he passed, turned to greet the person whom the news might be supposed to concern most nearly.

“Good evenin’ to ’ee, Mrs. Stuckhey; this here be very disapp’intin’, bain’t it?”

Susan responded with a little “dip,” for Farmer Joyce was the principal inhabitant of Riverton.

“E-es, sir, it be a bit disapp’intin’, I d’ ’low, but I reckon we’ll be hearin’ to-morrow as the good noos be true, and ’tis but the War Office what have made a mistake.”

“I dunno, I’m sure,” returned the farmer, heaving a deep sigh. “Them there Boers be a queer lot. I did never hear tell o’ sich folks. They do seem to be here, there, and everywhere, all at once as mid be—poppin’ up jist same as rabbits in warren. Ah,” he cried, delighted with his own simile, and anxious if possible to improve it, “it be jist same as if our troops were a-fightin’ o’ rabbits—rabbits wi’ guns,” he added with a chuckle.

“Well, my son do say as they don’t like the cold steel,” remarked Mrs. Stuckhey cautiously. “My son didn’t seem noways afeared on ’em. Says he, when he did last write, says he, ‘I should like a dig at the man what shot me’.”

“Ah, and did he?” said Mr. Joyce much impressed. “Well now, that was a good sayin’. A dig! Haw, haw?” here the farmer came to a standstill in the road to laugh more at his ease. “He’d like to give him a dig, would he?—haw, haw!—I d’ ’low he would. And ’tis but nat’ral, d’ye see, Mrs. Stuckhey,” he continued more seriously as he rolled forward again. “Nobody couldn’t blame the chap for wishin’ to stick the man as put a bullet in en—they couldn’t, indeed. Ye can’t expect a soldier to turn the other cheek, can ye now? But them Boers be jist same as rabbits—’tis what I do say constant. But we’ll ferret ’em out, yet—haw, haw, haw!—we’ll ferret ’em out, won’t us? Good-night to ’ee, Mrs. Stuckhey, and good-night to you, Mrs. Blanchard. We’ll be a-lookin’ for good noos soon.”

But the next war-news which came to Riverton was tragic. To the country at large, indeed, the glorious capture of Hlangwane Hill was a triumph, but among the killed on that day chanced to be Private Joseph Stuckhey, Riverton’s only soldier.

The blinds were drawn down in his mother’s little cottage, and friends and neighbours went in and out with dolorous faces. Who shall tell how the tidings were first broken to her, the faltering incredulous words she said, her bewildered grief?

A day or two after her home was made desolate Farmer Joyce, standing by his gate, happened to see her returning from the town, accompanied by Mrs. Blanchard, both of them burdened with a multiplicity of small parcels.

“Ah,” he said, greeting her with a groan of sympathy, “ye’ll ha’ been gettin’ o’ your deep Mrs. Stuckhey.”

“E-es, sir, I did have a few little things to get afore Sunday. There weren’t no sich hurry as usual when there be a death in th’ family—no funeral, you know. Dear, to be sure, it do seem so strange to think as there bain’t no funeral! ’Tis what d’ seem to come harder nor anything. If there were but a grave as I could ’tend to: if I could but ha’ done his last, Mr. Joyce. If it had but pleased the Lard to ha’ took him from me in England.”

“Nay, now, don’t ’ee take on, Mrs. Stuckhey. They do say as the poor dead bodies be treated wonderful respectful abroad. E-es, they do say so, indeed; and if your son had a-died in England somewhere up the country as where his reg’ment mid be, you couldn’t ha’ done his last for en no more nor you can now. I’ve a-been told as there be some graveyards, Mrs. Stuckhey—and not so far away neither—as be just same as rabbit warrens; you wouldn’t never think there was no co’pses in them at all.”

“Dear, now, to think of that!” ejaculated Susan, almost forgetting her grief in her scandalised amazement.

“E-es, indeed, they telled I that. Things mid be worse, ye see. Not but what I do sympathise for ’ee, Mrs. Stuckhey. It be a terrible visitation—an’ you a lone woman, and him your only son—I d’ ’low it be a terrible visitation. There bain’t a single person in Riverton village as don’t feel for ’ee.”

“Ah-h-h, ’tis true, sir, ’tis true,” put in Mrs. Blanchard, shaking her head. “There do seem to ha’ comed quite a gloom over the place since the sad noos come. E-es, I may say so, quite a gloom. And us as was all rej’ycin’ such a few days ago about Ladysmith, you know, as weren’t relieved at all. Dear, yes, how well I do mind it. I did say then, didn’t I, Mrs. Stuckhey? as bell sounded just same as if ’twere a-tollin’. Them was my very words, and I did go all shivery down my back and feeled quite nervish. ’Twas a token, I do r’aly believe. There was bell a-tollin’ o’ Wednesday as ’twere Monday poor Joe was killed.”

“Ah, dear, ’tis that what comes most cruel hard of all,” groaned the poor mother. “There was I laughin’ and talkin’ wi’ the rest, and my poor Joe stiff an’ cold.”

“E-es, indeed, Mrs. Stuckhey,” returned the farmer, winking away a tear from his own kindly eyes, “it do seem hard, I d’ ’low; the ways o’ Providence be oncomprehensible, as the Bible do say. I d’ ’low, this here do seem very providential.”

“I don’t think I’d ha’ minded so much if he’d a-been struck down after they’d won the victory, d’ye see,” went on Susan. “Nay, I could ha’ bore it better—I could have felt as his life weren’t took for nothin’; but to think as he were cut off when they’d only just started as he did tell I in his last letter. That they took en and shot en and ’tweren’t no use.”

“Nay, now, don’t ’ee say that, Mrs. Stuckhey, don’t ’ee go for to say that.” And Farmer Joyce brought down his fist emphatically on the low wall near which he was standing. “He gave his life for summat, you may depend. ’Twas in doin’ good work as he fell; and that there work ull go on, and ull end well, and your son ull ha’ helped to make it end well. Now, see here, this be the way to look at it. A wall’s a wall, bain’t it?” And he brought down his fist upon the coping again.

Both women, staring blankly at him, acceded to this incontrovertible statement.

“Well, and an army’s an army—ye’ll admit that.”

They admitted it.

“Well, and what be a wall made on? Stones or bricks. This here wall be made o’ stones. And what be an army made on? Men. Do ye take me? There wouldn’t be no wall if there weren’t no stones, and there wouldn’t be no army if there weren’t no men. And more”—raising his voice as he warmed to his subject—“there wouldn’t be no wall if some o’ them stones wasn’t laid underground for the foundations; and there wouldn’t be no army if there wasn’t no fightin’, an’ some o’ the men wasn’t killed. An’ ’tis my belief, Mrs. Stuckhey, as your Joe, what has got killed an’ been put underground, is one o’ the foundations o’ the British army. An’ when that there army marches into Ladysmith, as it be sure to do, your Joe ull ha’ done as much as any man to get it there.”

Poor Susan smiled and wiped her eyes, and held up her head with a sort of pitiful pride.

“Thank ’ee kindly, sir, for them words,” she said. “They be a’most the first bit o’ comfort I’ve a-had.”

“I’m sure Mr. J’yce do speak beautiful,” murmured Mrs. Blanchard admiringly. “There, I never heared the like, not without ’twas out of a noospaper. I’m sure it did ought to comfort ’ee, Mrs. Stuckhey.”

“Nay, now, ’tis nothin’ to speak on,” returned Mr. Joyce modestly. “My mind do seem to turn to them parodies easy like. D’ye mind about the rabbits? ‘Rabbits wi’ guns,’ says I. Haw, haw! I can scarce tell how them notions do come to my mind.”

“It be wonderful, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Blanchard. “As I do tell Mrs. Stuckhey, it ought to comfort her, poor soul. Mrs. Stuckhey have just been a-layin’ out five-and-sixpence for something rather partic’lar—haven’t ’ee, my dear? I d’ ’low Mr. J’yce ’ud like to see what you’ve got in that there parcel.”

“He be welcome, I’m sure,” said Susan, wiping her eyes again and sniffing.

She drew from under her cloak a round object carefully enveloped in tissue paper.

“I’d like to show it to ’ee, sir, if I mid make so bold. There, I got me this wi’ a few shillin’ I’d been a-layin’ by for to make a kind o’ little feast for my son when he did come home. I wasn’t never expectin’ as he wouldn’t come home, ye know; there did seem to be so many of ’em a-fightin’.”

Poor mother! while her Joe had lived he had been for her the only soldier; now that he was dead her thoughts dwelt ceaselessly on the vast size of the army of which he had formed a part, and it seemed to her strange and hard that while thousands were spared her one had been stricken down.

While she spoke she had removed the paper wrappers, and now held up to Mr. Joyce’s admiring, yet somewhat doubtful gaze, a large china wreath, such as may frequently be seen in village churchyards, composed of stiff white roses and conventional leaves.

“It be a beauty, Mrs. Stuckhey,” said the farmer hesitatingly. “There, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an ’andsomer one. But I’m wonderin’ how ye mean to manage about it, seein’ as, so to speak, there bain’t no grave—not handy, I mean. There be a grave, as I telled ’ee, and an honoured grave—the grave o’ the British soldier; but it wouldn’t be”—he coughed delicately—“convenient for ’ee to put wreaths on, I’m afeared; nay, I’m afeared it wouldn’t be easy.”

“Lard, no, sir, I wasn’t a-thinkin’ o’ usin’ it for the grave. Even if I was to send it to the War Office I couldn’t trust ’em to put it on for me. And it wouldn’t be no comfort anyhow wi’out I could see it there. Nay, I be a-going to hang this round my son’s likeness; ’twill be a kind of a memory of his grave as I can’t see it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Joyce, deeply moved.

Poor Susan had begun to weep again, and Mrs. Blanchard was not slow to follow her example. They moved away together, and presently, entering Mrs. Stuckhey’s house, proceeded to hang the wreath over poor Joe’s picture. After much hammering of tacks and knotting of string the task was completed, and the dead soldier’s chubby boyish face greeted all beholders through its white garland.

“’Tis beautiful, I’m sure,” exclaimed Mrs. Blanchard, falling back a little and speaking in a tone of almost awestruck admiration. “The uniform, you know, and the goldy frame, and the white flowers—I never seed anything so handsome.”

“’Tis his due,” said Mrs. Stuckhey, and she was conscious of a return of the glow of pride with which she had, a little time before, listened to the farmer’s allegory, and with that pride came a faint vague sense of comfort: at least her hero was honoured.

The poor must be up and doing; not theirs is the luxury of nursing grief. Though Susan Stuckhey’s heart might be sore, and many hot tears might drop into the suds as she bent over her wash-tub, her clients’ clean clothes must be sent home. She could not manage, however, to be quite so prompt as usual this particular week, and it chanced that on the Thursday—contrary to all precedent—she was hanging up some of the finer garments on her line to dry, when she was startled by what seemed to be the sound of an explosion.

“They be blastin’ up yonder,” she said to herself, and went on with her task. But the sound was repeated several times, and the neighbours began to come to their doors and to look towards the town, whence the sound proceeded.

“It do seem like firin’,” said Mrs. Blanchard with placid interest.

By-and-bye, a lad came tearing down the lane, waving his hat and shouting.

“’Tis relieved!” he cried. “Ladysmith be relieved! ’Tis true this time. It be wrote up in the town ‘Official noos’. They be firin’ a cannon near the Royal George, and the flags is up, and there’s to be a procession this evenin’, and every one’s goin’ mad for joy!”

Mrs. Stuckhey’s knees shook under her; she dropped the handkerchief which she had been pinning up, and covered her face with her hands.

“There, don’t ’ee take on,” said Mrs. Blanchard, commiseratingly. “Ye’d be like to feel it, I know; dear, yes, ’tis to be expected.”

“Well, now, I should think Mrs. Stuckhey ought to be glad,” said Mrs. Woolridge, surveying the washerwoman critically from her doorstep. “There be mothers’ sons in Ladysmith so well as anywhere else; ah, sure there be. Many a woman’s heart has been a-breakin’ thinkin’ of ’em starvin’ and famishin’ there. ’Twouldn’t bring your son back a bit more if they was to perish o’ hunger. You ought to be glad like the rest of us.”

“I am glad,” gasped poor Susan; and with that she turned, leaving her basket, and went into her house.

Her gaze, blurred though it was with tears, instantly sought Joe’s portrait, and the honest goggle eyes of the picture looked back, as it seemed to her, with infinite sadness.

“Ladysmith is relieved,” they seemed to say; “the victory is won—and I was not there.”

When presently the door creaked slowly open and Mrs. Blanchard entered, moving unwieldily on tip-toe, she found Susan seated by her steaming wash-tub with her apron thrown over her head.

“Don’t ’ee fret, my dear,” she said soothingly. “There isn’t one in the village as don’t sympathise for ’ee; and we do all feel as our own j’y bain’t full, so to speak. There, we do say to ourselves: If our own soldier was wi’ the others how proud we mid be!”

Mrs. Stuckhey did not answer, but pressed her apron more closely to her face with her trembling hands. Poor hands—seamed and sodden and, as it were, pock-marked from perpetual immersion in the suds; knotted and distorted by hard and heavy work—what a tale they told of privation and of toil!

“I don’t agree wi’ Martha Woolridge,” went on the visitor after a pause. “’Tisn’t fair to say as you have no feelin’ for the poor folks as was shut up over yonder. ’Tis but nat’ral you should be sorry your Joe didn’t have no hand in it.”

Susan jerked down her apron, and her eyes flashed beneath their red and swollen lids.

“Who says he didn’t have no hand in it?” she cried. “He did have a hand in it! Didn’t ’ee hear what Farmer Joyce did say? My son Joe were one o’ the foundations o’ the army.” She rose as she spoke and crossed the kitchen, her small figure dignified, even majestic.

She fumbled in the old-fashioned chest of drawers and drew forth a paper packet. Returning, she laid it upon the table, casting, as she did so, a glance at once severe and resolute upon the astonished Mrs. Blanchard; then, taking her sweeping-brush from behind the door, she proceeded with much deliberation to knock off its head.

“In the name o’ fortun’, Susan Stuckhey,” ejaculated her friend, “what be you a-goin’ to do?”

“You’ll see for yourself in a minute,” returned Susan; and, armed with the broom-handle and the little parcel, she went upstairs.

Mrs. Blanchard went out, backing away from the house, and fixing her eyes wonderingly, almost incredulously, on Susan’s upper window. Following the direction of her glance, Mrs. Woolridge and a few other women who had meanwhile gathered together gazed also expectantly upwards. Presently the latticed casement was thrown open and a sudden gleam of blue and scarlet fluttered over their heads.

“Bless me, woman, whatever are you at?” cried Mrs. Woolridge in shocked and horrified tones. “Ye don’t mean to say as you can have the heart—”

Susan’s resolute face looked forth a moment above her waving banner.

“I be a-doin’ what my son Joe did tell I to do. I be a-hangin’ out a flag for the victory as he’ve a-helped to win!”

And when, later in the day, the town band paraded gaily through the village with a large following of enthusiastic patriots dancing, shouting, singing, the little mother strove valiantly to fulfil the second part of poor Joe’s behest—to give the three cheers for which he had called. But though she ran to her gate when the crowd first came in sight, and waved her arm above her head, only a strangled sob broke from her when she strove to raise her voice. But at sight of the small figure in its mourning dress, the little cotton Union Jack waving gallantly from the upper window of the dead soldier’s home, a sudden hush fell upon the musicians and their followers, and they passed the house in silence with bared heads and reverent tread.

And perhaps this tribute of respect was paid less to the emblem of their country’s greatness, less even to the memory of the poor young hero who had laid down his life for its sake, than to the brave little woman who stood unflinchingly at her post, and who felt her heart beat high with sacred triumph though the tears were raining down her face.

“I be a-hangin’ out a flag for the victory as he’ve a-helped to win!”

A RUSTIC ARGUS.

It was evening; most of the inhabitants of the old-world village were standing about their doorways, and a few of the more energetic were at work in their tiny patches of garden. It was noticeable that those among the men who had not betaken themselves to the allotments leaned in lordly fashion against their door-posts or lolled over the garden hedge, deeming, no doubt, that they had already borne their share of the burden of the day, and that such trifling supplementary labour as watering cabbages or tying up carnations might well be left to the women-folk.

Mrs. Fripp seemed to accept this state of things without protest. She was a stout woman, and the weather was warm. She had been busy all day at her wash-tub, and she groaned as she bent her bulky person over the flowers that would keep slipping away from her large, moist fingers just as she had deemed they were secure.

“Drat it!” she murmured under her breath, as a beautiful bloom slid from its stick for the fourth time.

“They be ticklish things,” observed Mr. Fripp from his station in the doorway, without taking the trouble to remove his pipe, and speaking in consequence somewhat indistinctly. “Ah, they be ticklish things. They d’ take a dale o’ patience.”

“That they do!” agreed his spouse heartily, standing upright, and straightening her broad back. She looked half absently up and down the sloping village street, which lay deep in shadow, save at the uppermost end, where the gables of the thatched houses were bathed in the evening glow, the light falling full upon the whitewashed chimney-stack of the little hostelry known as the “Pure Drop,” and creeping downwards along the irregular line of roofs until it terminated abruptly just where Mrs. Fripp’s wash-house jutted out into the street. Seen thus at this mystic hour there was much beauty about the little hamlet, which, indeed, at any time had a quaint charm of its own. The eaves of many of the roofs sloped downwards at certain points almost to the ground, overhanging here a mullioned window, and bulging out there into a minute and fantastically shaped gable. Creepers clung close to the whitewashed walls, hollyhocks stood in many a homely garden with the stateliness they might better have assumed in the pleasaunce of a queen; pigeons bowed and cooed on the sunlit apex of russet roof or golden stack; children played about the doorsteps or made pies of the dust in the road.

But Mrs. Fripp gazed on these things indifferently, her glance having fixed itself on a tall, angular woman’s figure which was at that moment travelling slowly towards her.

“’Tis never Mrs. Adlam steppin’ this way—come to look after Susan, I d’ ’low. Them two girls hey been gossipin’ in there this hour an’ more.”

“It’ll be about Tom Locke, I’ll warrant, that they’re a-talkin’,” agreed her lord, the black pipe wagging with every word, and being sucked at the conclusion of the sentence with evident relish. “Aye, aye; maids will get talkin’ about sweethearts an’ that. ’Tis naitral at their age, an’ this accident o’ pore Tom’s is oncommon onfart’nate. Good-day, Mrs. Adlam, ’tis powerful warm, ’tis, surely.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Mrs. Adlam hurriedly and abstractedly. “Good-day to ye, Mr. Fripp. Is Susan within?”

“Aye,” said Mr. Fripp, without moving his form from the door-post, “she’s sittin’ a bit wi’ our Lizzie. Our maid’s jest foldin’ a few clothes for her mother to iron to-morrow, an’ Susan’s sittin’ wi’ her.”

“Ah, neighbour, your Lizzie’s wonderful handy, they say,” responded Mrs. Adlam—without enthusiasm, however. “Now, my maid’s that delicate an’ nervous like, she’s no use at all at home, I may say. I’ve had to have doctor to her times an’ times, but ’tis no manner o’ use. She can’t do many things for herself, pore maid; an’ she can scarce abear to see me a-doin’ of ’em. ’Tis a nesh flower, neighbours. Why, she d’ run out o’ the room when I put our bit o’ beef of a Sunday to the fire, an’ she d’ very near faint if I go for to skin a rabbit.”

“Well, to think on’t!” said Mr. and Mrs. Fripp together, commiseratingly, but admiringly, too. Such a constitution as Susan’s was felt to be a credit to any village.

“Ah, ’tis a nesh flower,” repeated the mother with a kind of fretful triumph. “Laist time Doctor Richmond come I explained to him as well as I could how she be took, an’ I says to him: ‘Could you tell me, sir,’ says I, ‘what ’tis as ails my daughter?’ An’ he looks at me so earnest as he could, an’ he said ’twas—oh, a terrible long name—it always slips my mind, but it’s awful long. Wait a bit; I’ll have it in a minute. Ye mind that climbin’ tree as runs round the corner o’ the ‘Pure Drop’? It do have blue blossoms in the spring-time, hangin’ down summat o’ the natur o’ laburnum. You know, Mrs. Fripp—so fond of flowers as you be.”

“Aye, we had wan at my father’s place—he was gardener, ye know—I d’ call it to mind, now. Westonia, that’s what it be called. Nay, now; westeria—that’s it.”

“Ah, that’s it,” agreed Mrs. Adlam; adding, with impressive solemnity, “Well, that’s what’s the matter wi’ my Susan.”

“Very like,” assented Mrs. Fripp, who was an imaginative woman. “’Tis but a pore nesh thing, that creeper—never has no leaves till ’tis well-nigh done flowerin’.”

“Such fancies as she d’ take even in the way o’ courtin’,” resumed Mrs. Adlam. “Says she to me once: ‘Mother,’ says she, ‘don’t you count on me ever gettin’ wed, for I assure ye I abhor mankind.’”

“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Mr. Fripp, much startled and infinitely scandalised. “’Twas an unnait’ral thing for a maid to say, sure. Never heard o’ such a thing. I be sorry for ye, Mrs. Adlam, that I be.”

“She takes them notions out o’ the books that she d’ read when she be porely,” returned the mother, apologetically. “Ah, that’s where she gets ’em; but I do assure you, neighbours, them was her very words. I don’t notice her no more than if she was a child. I did think a few months ago, in spite of all, that she’d be gettin’ settled so comfortable as she could be. Tom Locke ’s a good, studdy young chap, earnin’ a good bit, now. He’ll be havin’ the farm, too, when his father dies. But the maid is so upset about that accident, I don’t know whatever to do wi’ her. I thought she’d get over the feelin’ about his losin’ that eye; but it laisses so strong as ever. He came to our place this evenin’, an’ she did jump up an’ run straight away here. He’ve a-been waitin’ an’ waitin’, pore young man, but at laist he gets up, an’ says he: ‘I’ll go, Mrs. Adlam. Will ’ee tell Susan that if she wants to see me again, she can meet me up the lane at the wold place on Sunday?’”

“Well,” said Mrs. Fripp, gazing thoughtfully up the street again, and then suffering her glance to revert to Mrs. Adlam’s lean, anxious face, “’tis terrible hard for ’ee, ’tis indeed. I’m sorry for pore Tom, yet ’tis an awk’ard thing for a girl to wed wi’ a man as has but one eye. An’ Susan being so bashful an’ tewly seems to make it worse. Does he look terrible bad, Mrs. Adlam?”

Mrs. Adlam considered. “One side looks much the same as ever,” she said. “Aye, one eye’s jest like it always was, but t’other side”—She paused. “Well, there’s no eye at all t’other side.”

“Doctor took it out, did he?” inquired Fripp, deeply interested. “Well, Mrs. Adlam, ’tisn’t so bad but it mid have been worse—we must comfort ourselves so well as we can. If keeper hadn’t been by, an’ hadn’t out wi’s knife, same as he did, an’ took shots out o’ Tom’s eye at once, he’d very like have lost t’other one. As I say, it mid ha’ been worse.”

“Tom said jest now as doctor thought keeper’d ha’ done better to ha’ left his eye alone,” sighed Mrs. Adlam. “But there’s no tellin’—doctors is jealous folk; they can’t abear a body to do a thing for theirselves. Why, laist winter when I had the inflammation, an’ made mysel’ a drop o’ gruel wi’ rum in it to strengthen me a bit, Doctor Richmond was that vexed! Well, I must be goin’. Will ’ee call my maid, Mr. Fripp?”

The good man complied. Screwing his person a little sideways round the door-post, and turning his head over his shoulder, he bellowed forth, first the name of his own daughter and then that of Mrs. Adlam’s, at intervals of about a quarter of a minute, until there was a hasty banging of doors in the back premises, a patter of feet across the kitchen, and the two girls appeared simultaneously on the threshold. Susan Adlam, tall, fair, and blue-eyed, with the complexion of a rose-leaf, and hands so white that they told their own tale of selfishness and incapacity; Lizzie Fripp, dark, with a brown merry face, and a squat sturdy form. With a little more height and a little less breadth she might have been pretty.

“Oh, ’tis you, Mother,” said Susan, with a bashful wriggle. “Is Tom gone? I’m sure I hope he is. Don’t ask me to go home if he’s there, for I couldn’t abear to see en.”

Mrs. Adlam cast up her eyes to heaven, and then looked round with a certain melancholy pride.

“No, no! Come along, my dear, he’s gone; an’ I was to say if ye wanted to spaik to en again you was to meet en at the wold place o’ Sunday.”

“I don’t want to see en again,” said Susan tossing her head.

“For shame!” cried little Lizzie. “I wonder at ye, Susan. The pore chap’ll break his ’eart. An’ what’s an eye, after all? ’Tisn’t real needful to a man—not like as if it was an arm now, so as he couldn’t work for ’ee, or a leg, so as he’d have to have a wooden un, an’ go peggety-peg up church. Nay, now, there’d be raison if ’twas an arm or a leg—but a body can see as well wi’ one eye as wi’ two.”

“Hark to the maid!” cried Mr. Fripp, with a great roar of laughter. “She d’ spaik like print. Well done, little un!”

“Well, I’m not fond of one-eyed folks if you be,” cried Susan sarcastically. “I’d not have a man without two eyes, not if I was to bide single all my life. I’d as lief be single as not—I’ve no fancy for wedlock.”

“Dear, dear,” said Fripp, “’tis terrible to hear how onraisonable the pore maid d’ talk! Take her home, do, Mrs. Adlam, an’ make her lay down.”

“Come along then, Susan,” cried Mrs. Adlam with an air of chastened dignity; “come along, else you’ll be havin’ the westeria again.”

“Nay, now, Mother, ’tis heasteria ye mean. Doctor said plain as the name of it was heasteria.”

“Lard, child, heast or west, ’tis all one. You come home wi’ me, do ’ee now, else you’ll be laid up.”

She drew one of the pretty white hands through her own bony arm and led her daughter gently away, supporting her with increasing solicitude, as the girl, conscious of attracting universal attention, began to limp and to stagger in the most interesting manner.

“Pore thing!” murmured Fripp commiseratingly. “She d’ seem to be falterin’. I d’ ’low ’tis a terrible visitation for Mrs. Adlam, ’tis surely. Well, Mother, let us give thanks where thanks be due. Lizzie, here, is a good set off to t’other one.”

“She’d better be,” retorted Mrs. Fripp, speaking loudly and decisively for Lizzie’s benefit. “I’d have no patience wi’ such goin’s on. I’d take a bit o’ broom-end to her instead o’ the doctor if I were Mrs. Adlam.”

“Well said!” chimed in a red-faced matron from the other side of the hedge. “It never does no good to spile childer. Says I to mine soon’s ever they grow up: ‘Now,’ I says, ‘I’ve gi’ed ye a good educassion, and now yer claaws must keep yer jaaws,’ I says.”

Though the education which the good lady in question had bestowed upon her progeny was known to be of a somewhat questionable order, and though the said progeny were by no means considered creditable to the community at large, the theory was so sound in itself that the Fripps agreed heartily; and the sentiment was endorsed by the village policeman, who for the last few minutes had been listening unobserved to the discussion.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s what I call straightfor’ard. ‘Yer claaws must keep yer jaaws,’ says you. If Susan Adlam had nothing to put into her mouth but what her ’ands got for her she’d starve, pore young craiture. But tis a very foolish business about Tom Locke. The young man’s a fine young man, doin’ well, an’ like to do better—an eye more nor less doesn’t alter his being a wonderful good match for the girl. But if she’s so set on his havin’ a pair, why doesn’t he get a mock un put in?”

“A mock eye!” exclaimed Mrs. Fripp in amazement. “My stars! I never heard tell o’ such a thing. You be jokin’ surely, policeman.”

“Nay, not I indeed. I knowed a man livin’ out Tipton way as lost his eye on account o’ a bit o’ blasted rock goin’ into it; an’ he went to Bristol an’ come back wi’ a beautiful new un—ye’d scarce know it from his own, only it were a deal handsomer.”

“D— my eyes!” murmured Mr. Fripp, not with any intentional profanity, but because the expletive seemed peculiarly adapted to the circumstances.

“Ah, I knowed him well. Many a time he’s took out the glass eye to let me see it. ’Twas a wonderful invention, an’ it cost I believe a sight o’ money. He didn’t wear it every day, but he allus put it in o’ market-days an’ Sundays. Ah, ’twas a curious thing to see en o’ Sundays, lookin’ at parson so wide-awake wi’ the glass eye, while t’other maybe was as drowsy as yours or mine mid be.”

“Well I never!” murmured Mrs. Fripp. “Somebody ought to tell young Locke about it,” she added, as an afterthought.

“’Tisn’t exactly the kind o’ subject a body ’ud think o’ namin’ to the pore man,” said the policeman, who was a person of refined feelings. “To say ‘Good-day to ye, an’ why don’t ye get a glass eye?’ ’ud seem a bit strange. Well, neighbours, I must be movin’ on. ’Tis a pity for the pore chap; but we must feel grateful for him as Providence didn’t see fit to try en no worse.”

On the next Sunday afternoon, after Lizzie had cleared away the dinner things, and fed the chickens, and scrubbed the faces of her little brothers and sisters previous to their departure for Sunday School, she donned her white straw hat, with its big red rose nodding triumphantly from a commanding position just over the centre of her forehead, pinned a posy of carnations and jasmine and southern-wood in the bosom of her blue dress, drew a new pair of cotton gloves over her plump hands, and sallied forth up the street to call on Susan.

She found Mrs. Adlam with her Sunday gown pinned back over a striped petticoat, her sleeves rolled up as high as Sunday sleeves would go, and a further protection against possible accidents in the shape of a large-bibbed apron shrouding the remainder of her Sabbath glories, hard at work washing up.

“Good-day, Mrs. Adlam. I jest called round to see how Susan mid be.”

“Good-day, Lizzie. Susan’s very bad, thank ye. She’s layin’ on her bed upstairs. Step up if you like.”

Lizzie stepped up, and found her friend reclining outside her patchwork quilt, absorbed in the perusal of a “penny dreadful” of the most thrilling type. Lizzie approached the bed, clumping sturdily with her well-polished best boots.

“Bain’t ye agoin’ to see pore Tom?” she inquired, without wasting time on preliminaries.

Susan looked up, startled: she had just got to that point in the narrative when the heroine, drawing herself up to her full height, informed the villain that she would be sooner clasped by a serpent than permit herself to be degraded by his embrace.

“What? No, I’m not going to see Tom Locke. My nerves is much too upset. Ye did give me a jump comin’ in that way, Lizzie.”

“He’ll be waiting up there for you to spaik to en.”

“Well, ’tisn’t my fault if he do. I never axed en to. I’m real fainty an’ porely to-day, Lizzie; couldn’t so much as go to church. Sit down, an’ let’s talk a bit. I seed yer father lookin’ arter me t’other night; I was walkin’ so queer, wasn’t I? I expect he thought I was lookin’ real bad.”

“No, I’ll not sit down,” said Lizzie. She planted her umbrella on the floor, and stared at the other girl for a moment without speaking.

“If he was to get another eye would ye look at en then?” she remarked at length, abruptly. “A mock un, I mane. They can be had easy, Policeman Blanchard says. No good to see out of, ye know, but jest to look at.”

“Oh, Lizzie, what a tale! He was makin’ fun o’ you.”

“No, he wasn’t. ’Twas to father he said it. He said he knowed a man Tipton way as had un—rale ’andsome—’andsomer nor his own. He wore it Sundays an’ ’olidays, an’ took it out week days for fear o’ accidents.”

“Well,” said Susan, consideringly, “if Tom were to get un perhaps I could forget it were a mock un; but he’d have to wear it always, that he would, else I couldn’t make believe ’twere real.”

“Well, I’ll go an’ tell en that. If he gets a real nice one ye’ll think on’t, won’t ye, Susan?”

“I dunno; I’ll see,” said Susan provisionally.

Lizzie marched towards the door without another word.

“’Tis a funny notion, though, yer takin’ it up like that,” cried Susan, suddenly awaking to the fact. “Be ye really goin’ to en now?”

“Yes, I be,” replied Lizzie, without turning her head; and down the stairs clattered she, and out into the air.

Leaving the village behind she ascended a steep, stony path, which led across a curious and antiquated bridge, and presently found herself in a shady lane bordered on both sides by high banks, where the hedgerows had long escaped all control of man, and grew in a wild and most picturesque tangle. Here thorn and gorse and wild apple crowded upon each other; golden maple was thrown into relief by the sturdier green of the elder; there the clustering berries of a guelder-rose, already turning red, made a wondrous patch of colour, while the tiny, soft-shelled hazel nuts shone out from the deep green leaves like pearls; over all the traveller’s-joy had flung its wealth of delicate blossom and clinging tendril, now swinging proudly from the topmost bough of a tall sapling, now creeping low amidst the brambles and the bracken. A yellow-hammer called to a brother occasionally from some swaying twig; little speckled half-fledged robins hopped along the path in front of Lizzie, taking occasional short flights when she came inconveniently near, but returning to peer up at her with large, yellow-rimmed, curious eyes.

Lizzie noticed none of these things. Had she had a mind to gaze upon the beauties of the prospect, she would have peered through the gaps in the green ramparts down to the plain, and away past the cultivated fields and the silver windings of the river to the distant roofs and chimney-stacks of the market town. One could obtain a beautiful view of the new brewery from here; the brickwork looked as red as red, and one could see the smoke rising from the great chimney. Ah, that was a view worth looking at; so all the villagers said, and Lizzie agreed with them.

But to-day she stared straight in front of her, with eyes as round and curious as those of the robins themselves; eyes which had, moreover, an alarmed expression entirely lacking to those of the bold, sociable little birds in question. Her heart was beginning to beat rather fast, and she was conscious of increasing trepidation as she drew near the trysting-place.

At a turn of the lane she could see a pair of long legs thrust out from a recess in the bank; then a hand idly brandishing a stick; at length a head moving amid the clustering leaves. When the rapid clump, clump of her thick-soled boots reached his ears, the man rose quickly and came towards her. A tall, loose-limbed, young fellow, with a fringe of dark beard and whisker round his brown face; his hat was pulled rather forward over his brows, and his one remaining eye looked eagerly and anxiously towards the approaching figure.

One glance told him that the sturdy form was not that of his sweetheart, and he turned away, whistling to himself to hide his disappointment, and swishing absently at the wayside grasses. He expected the rapid steps to pass on; but, to his surprise, they slackened as they drew near, and then abruptly ceased.

“Good-day to ’ee, Mr. Locke.”

“Ah,” said Locke, “it’s Lizzie Fripp. Good-day, Lizzie, good-day.”

He turned unwillingly as he spoke. Though not by nature a sensitive man, he felt a little diffident as to the impression which his new disfigurement was likely to create when first beheld by a stranger.

“Ye be waitin’ for Susan?” said Lizzie, staring hard for a moment and then averting her eyes. “She’s—she’s not able to come to-day.”

“I thought as much,” said Tom gloomily. “I’ve been sittin’ here two hour an’ more. Did she send ye to me?” he added suddenly.

“No, I came myself. I wanted to tell ’ee somethin’, Mr. Locke,” blurted out Lizzie tremulously. “I d’ ’low that if you was to get a glass eye Susan ’ud love you jest the same as ever.”

A dark flush overspread the young farmer’s face, and a flash of anger appeared in his solitary orb.

“Did she tell ’ee to say this?” he asked, after a pause.

“Nay now, nay now, don’t ’ee take on so, Mr. Locke. They was all talkin’ about it in the village laist night; an’ Policeman Blanchard said he knowed a man as had one that could be took in an’ out quite handy, an’ it looked jest the same as t’other, only ’andsomer. An’ I axed Susan if ye was to get one would she walk with ’ee again, an’ she seemed to take to the notion; so I thought I’d jest run here an’ tell ’ee.”

“Did ye?” said Tom. “That was very well done, Lizzie.”

“Well, I thought ’twas but kind,” said Lizzie modestly. “Susan, ye see, has a terrible delicate constitootion, an’ takes things to ’eart. Why, she could scarce so much as walk home from our place laist night.”

“Couldn’t she?” returned Locke sardonically. “She run fast enough out o’ my way—I know that. Aye, she showed as clean a pair o’ heels as a maid need wish to. An’ so she said she’d take to me again if I was to get a glass eye, did she?”

“She said she’d think on’t,” returned the girl cautiously.

Tom took off his hat and bent down till his face was nearly on a level with Lizzie’s.

“Look here, Lizzie Fripp,” he said authoritatively; “you be a trewth-tellin’ maid, an’ ye’ll gi’e me a straightfor’ard answer. Tell me plain! I was reckoned a fairish good-lookin’ chap till now, but this accident has spiled my looks for me. Tell me the trewth. Am I such an object that any maid would run away from me, or is it jest Susan that’s extra pertic’lar?”

Lizzie raised her honest brown eyes and gazed at him steadily.

“You’re not an object, Mr. Locke,” she said thoughtfully. “Dear no, not at all an object. I think a body ’ud soon get used to—to one side bein’ a little different from t’other. But some maids takes notions, ye see. My mother said she never could abide red hair. If father’d hev been a red-haired man she’d never ha’ married him. Now I think ’tis much the same as any other colour.”

Tom slowly straightened himself. A smile was hovering about his mouth.

“You think I’d look better with a glass eye?” he inquired.

“Well,” returned Lizzie dispassionately, “I think it ’ud be very nice for Sundays, Mr. Locke. Sundays an’ market-days, or when ye was goin’ for a drive in the trap, or such like.”

“I see,” said Tom, meditatively stroking his beard. “P’r’aps I’ll talk to doctor about it.”

“Oh, do,” she urged eagerly. “I d’ ’low Susan ’ll be real pleased.”

“Ah!” said Tom. “Be ye goin’ home now, Lizzie?”

“Yes. I only came this way to see you.”

“Oh, an’ did ye? Well, ’twas very kindly done of you. Come, I’ll walk a piece of the way with you.”

He walked a piece of the way—indeed, he walked all the way; and Lizzie thought within herself, as they trudged along, that if any stranger met them who did not know them, he might have taken them for sweethearts; for they walked in almost unbroken silence, just as courting people did, and Tom kept very close to her, and when they came to a rough piece of road he supported her by the elbow, just as he might have done if she had been Susan.

That young lady happened to be leaning languidly against her door-post when the couple drew near. She had been looking up the road as though expecting somebody, and at sight of Tom uttered a faint shriek and rushed into the house, closing the door.

“Pore Susan!” cried Lizzie commiseratingly. “It has given her a turn to see you.”

Locke made no reply, but, after a moment, coming to the precipitous descent which led downwards from the bridge, he supported Lizzie very kindly, and was indeed good enough at one particularly stony bit to encircle her waist with his arm. They parted at the Adlams’ door, and Lizzie tripped joyfully upstairs.

“It’s all right,” she cried gaily. “He’s promised to see about gettin’ a new eye, Susan.”

Miss Adlam turned abruptly away from the window where she chanced to be standing, and cast a suspicious glance upon her friend.

“What was Tom Locke’s arm doin’ round your waist?” she inquired.

“Why, the path was so steep,” explained Lizzie, opening her eyes very wide. “What’s the matter, Susan? Bain’t ye so well this evenin’?”

For Susan was making an odd sort of gulping noise.

“Ye sly thing!” she burst out suddenly. “Lard! I wouldn’t be so treecherous—that I wouldn’t; running after en afore my very eyes. Get along with ’ee, do. I’ll have nothin’ more to say to ’ee.”

Lizzie stared for a moment, thunderstruck, her usually rosy face turning quite pale, and tears presently rushing to her eyes.

“Well, Susan,” she said, as soon as she had recovered her breath, “I didn’t think it of ’ee to turn on me so sudden. I never did nothin’ but what was for yer good. I thought it ’ud plaze ye. But there, you can manage en for yourself now. I don’t care if Tom Locke doesn’t get no new eye at all.”

She hurried from the room, leaving Susan convulsively choking and sobbing.

“Dear heart! dear heart! she’s took wi’ the westeria again,” groaned Mrs. Adlam, as she went creaking up the stairs.

But little Lizzie made no response. Her cheeks were red enough now, and she metaphorically shook the dust of the Adlam premises from her feet as she closed the garden gate behind her.

She kept religiously away from her former friend throughout the week, but when Sunday came round that young lady actually condescended to pay her a visit. Susan arrived attired in white, with a wreath of daisies round her hat, and a great bunch of monthly roses in her waistband; the coils of her fair hair shone like gold in the sunlight—she was a harmony of white and pink and yellow, very pleasant to behold, particularly as her face was flushed with unwonted excitement, and her eyes were bright and eager.

Lizzie received her in the orchard, where she was feeding the chickens. She was not yet dressed for the afternoon, it being her mother’s turn to go to church, and various household duties falling in consequence to her share to-day; but she had put on the clean print which was to serve her throughout the coming week, and a big white apron over that. Her curly brown hair was plaited very neatly, and her sleeves rolled up high on her firm plump arms. The sun glanced down through the heavily laden apple boughs upon her active little figure as she flitted from one hen-coop to another dispensing handfuls of yellow meal to the half-fledged chickens that ran in and out between the bars; her bright tin bucket glittered in the rays, and the little brown tendrils on her forehead danced up and down with the rapidity of her movements.

“Oh, Lizzie, I’ve such a piece of news for you!”

“Oh, it’s you,” she remarked, not quite so cordially as usual.

“Yes, it’s me,” cried Susan eagerly. “Oh, Lizzie, I’ve such a piece of news for you! Tom Locke has been away all the week, and they d’ say he’s jest come back wi’ two eyes—a new imitation one that looks jest the same as t’other.”

“Has he truly?” responded Lizzie, her lingering resentment forgotten, and a broad smile beaming on her face. “Why, I am glad, I am, sure. Ye’ll be willin’ to take up wi’ en now, Susan?”

“I’ll see,” responded the other, with a little toss of the head. “I can’t answer for myself altogether, but I’ll try to conquer my feelin’s. I’m jest thinkin’ o’ takin’ a stroll over the bridge yonder an’ up the lane towards Locke’s. An’ if I do happen to meet en we’ll see how things turns out, Lizzie.”

But it chanced that the meeting with Tom Locke was to take place under different circumstances than those which his sweetheart had anticipated. At that very moment the portly form of Mrs. Fripp emerged from the back door of the cottage, followed by the tall figure of a man—a man whose bearded brown face was enlivened by a pair of beautiful brown eyes. He advanced straight to Lizzie, beaming with pleasure and manly pride.

“Good day to ’ee, Lizzie,” he cried. “I’ve jest come to ax if ye’ll go for a walk wi’ me.”

“Oh, Mr. Locke, ye mane Susan, surely?” stammered the little rosy-faced damsel.

“Ah, you didn’t see that I was here,” said Susan, coming forward with a coquettish sidle and a fatuous smile.

“Nay, Susan, I seed ye very well. I was sorry to hear ye was so porely—I hope ye’re feelin’ a trifle better now. Well, Lizzie my dear, ye’ll gi’e me an answer, won’t ye? I’ll be truly pleased to take ’ee for a walk.”

The two girls looked at one another; the fiery light of animosity beginning to shine in Susan’s eyes; wonder, confusion, and a kind of doubtful pleasure perceptible in Lizzie’s.

“Ye see ’tis this way,” proceeded Locke, in an affably explanatory tone, “I took yer advice, Lizzie, an’ got fixed wi’ a new eye at Bristol. An’ ye wouldn’t believe the difference it has made to my sight. Lard! I wonder I could ha’ been so blind before! But I see clear now at last, an’ I see, my maid, that you’re the wife for me.”

* * * * *

The seizure which overtook Susan Adlam on realising that Tom Locke’s mind was irrevocably made up would have thrilled the whole village, had not the interest once evoked by her uncommon delicacy of constitution been now entirely absorbed in admiring contemplation of Tom Locke’s artificial eye. The fact of Susan Adlam’s being subject to attacks of that remarkable malady with the high-sounding name did, no doubt, confer a certain distinction upon the neighbourhood; but what was that compared with the lustre of having in their midst a man with a removable eye? An eye that could be pocketed when not in immediate use, and assumed at a moment’s notice when it was desired to create a favourable impression.

The new Mrs. Locke, being a thrifty soul, did not encourage too frequent a use of this wonderful adornment; and, indeed, it was universally felt that the spectacle would somewhat lose in value if it were made too cheap. But little Lizzie, though she was the humblest of her sex, felt a modest glow of pride when she sat beside her husband in the spring-cart; and on Sundays her devotion was somewhat disturbed by the pleasant consciousness that, at sermon time, the glances of the congregation wandered frequently from the countenance of the preacher towards the preternaturally alert orb of her Thomas.

THE ROSY PLATE.

“Where thy treasure is, there also is thy heart.”

When old Maria Stickly had come slowly hobbling down the narrow stairs each morning, and had passed through the rickety door which admitted her into the kitchen, her first glance was directed towards the plate which occupied a prominent and central position on the topmost shelf of the dresser.

Hands which had long since mouldered into dust had driven into this shelf the two nails, rusty with age, which kept it from slipping. Maria herself had, many, many years before, constructed the little cloth pad which supported its upper rim; and her first act after lighting the fire and sweeping the tiled floor was to possess herself of this treasure, and carefully and lovingly polish every inch of its already shining surface with a soft cloth kept for the purpose.

This plate, the Rosy Plate, as Maria called it, though, in truth, the large crimson flower which sprawled over its centre in the midst of foliage of a kind totally unknown to botanists might just as well have been likened to a peony or a hollyhock, had played a very important part in its owner’s career—in fact, it might have been called the arbiter of her destiny. Maria used to tell the story sometimes when her nearest neighbour, good-natured, overworked Mrs. Andrews, who lived on the top of the hill a mile away, dropped in to rest on her return home after a marketing expedition, the results of which took up so much room in the perambulator that “the twin,” a fine healthy pair of four-year-old boys, the youngest of her family, had to take it by turns to walk.

Very hot and tired used poor Mrs. Andrews to be by the time she reached this halting-place, very fractious were the children, the pedestrian hanging on to his mother’s skirts and wailing intermittingly, while the proud occupant of the “pram” kicked viciously at the parcels as they encroached on the space usually allotted to his own fat little legs, and uttered piercing shrieks when his exhausted mother reproved him with certain admonitory but wholly innocuous taps. No wonder that at such times as these Mrs. Stickly’s little cottage appeared a very haven of rest, and the sight of her kind old ruddy face peering out between the geraniums in the little window was as welcome as the face of an angel.

“Walk in, Mrs. Andrews, dear, do ’ee now, an’ sit ye down. Tommy!—that bain’t never Tommy a-cryin’, I’m sure. And here’s little Walter a-sittin’ so good in his pram, bless his little ’eart—he wouldn’t cry. Come in, come in, and see what Mrs. Stickly have a-got ye. A little bird did tell I as there was a slice o’ bread an’ sugar in the cupboard for two good boys. I wonder who they can be! Come in, Mrs. Andrews, an’ rest ye a bit; I’ve got the tea drawed all ready, down here in the chimbley corner—he’ll be nice and strong, for he’ve a-been made nigh half a hour.”

“’Tis wonderful kind o’ you, Mrs. Stickly,” Mrs. Andrews would probably return, jamming the pram into a convenient angle behind the door-post, and heaving a weary sigh as she entered the cosy little kitchen. “’Tis what I should never ha’ thought on, I’m sure. I should never ha’ looked for sich a thing. But a cup o’ tea is a blessin’ when a body have been so far as I’ve been. Two lumps, if you please—thank you—that’ll do nice. Sit ye down, Tommy, and Walter, stand here quiet aside o’ me. If you be good little boys, Mrs. Stickly ’ull maybe show you the rosy plate afore we do go home.”

Then Tommy and Walter would munch their bread-and-sugar in blissful silence, and make themselves amazingly sticky, and stare with all their might at the crimson-bedecked trophy which gleamed down at them from its eminence on the dresser. And when Mrs. Andrews had drunk her tea, and told her kind hostess all her troubles—how her master was only working four days a week, or how Teddie had got sore eyes, or how Susanna had an impression on her chest, or, perhaps, how she herself had been that bad last week with a sore throat that if anybody had comed to her wi’ a cup o’ tea in one hand and a poker in the other, she would have been forced to choose the poker; and when Mrs. Stickly had duly groaned and shaken her head in sympathy, the desire of the “twin” was acceded to, and the rosy plate was carefully taken down and submitted to the admiring inspection of the two pairs of round sloe-black eyes.

Mrs. Andrews well knew that this little ceremony caused quite as much pleasure to Mrs. Stickly as to the children, and it was, perhaps, on this account chiefly that she asked for it, and that, moreover, busy as she was, with a thousand odd jobs waiting for her at home, she lingered a little longer in order to hearken to the oft-told tale of the rosy plate, and of all that it represented to its owner. Leaning back in Mrs. Stickly’s best chair with the patchwork cushion, and the knitted antimacassar astride on its shiny wooden back, she would fold her arms, heave a sigh of sentimental reminiscence, and remark tentatively:

“Dear, yes, Mrs. Stickly, they poor innocents don’t have no notion of all as that there pretty plate have a-brought about. Nay, that they haven’t. But ye could tell a tale about that plate, couldn’t ’ee, Mrs. Stickly?”

“Ah, that I could,” the old woman would say, swallowing the bait eagerly. “My poor husband, you know—Stickly—he did give it I when first he was a-coortin’ me.”

“So I think I’ve heard you say,” Mrs. Andrews would return, with placid interest. “Ye’d jist a-had a miff afore he give it ye.”

“E—es, we did have a bit of a miff that time; and we shouldn’t never ha’ made it up, I don’t think, if Stickly hadn’t give me the rosy plate.”

“He did buy it for ’ee at Shroton, didn’t he?” Mrs. Andrews would say, needing perhaps to recall her hostess to the present by some such reminder, for frequently, when talking of these far-away times, Mrs. Stickly’s faded blue eyes would assume a dreamy look, and it would become evident that her thoughts had strayed away from her interlocutrix to the bygone days, when she was a handsome young lass, and Stickly and his peers had come “a-coortin’.”

“Ah, he did buy it for I there—there was more nor him did want to buy it for I. Dear heart alive, I can mind it so well as if it were yesterday. I were reckoned a good-lookin’ maid in those days—I did use to have a very good colour, and my hair was curly and yollow—as yollow as the corn, Stickly did say sometimes—and there was a good many arter me one way and another. There was Tom Boyt—a farmer’s son he were—and there was ’Neas Stuckhey—”

“Strange,” Mrs. Andrews occasionally murmured at this moment, for the coincidence never failed to strike her, “Stuckhey and Stickly—the two names do sound very much alike. ’Tis odd how things do come about—ye chose Stickly, and it mid jist as well ha’ been Stuckhey.”

To this profound remark Mrs. Stickly would probably assent, and would then continue:—

“E—es, a lot o’ us young folks did set off for Shroton Fair that day. There was me, and Annie Boyt, Tom’s sister, and Rose Paddock; and there was Tom, and ’Neas, and my John—that’s Stickly, though I didn’t call him my John then—and a young man from Shillingstone, whose name I can’t mind at the present time, but he was a-coortin’ of Annie. And as we did all want to go together, Tom and Annie did persuade their father to let ’em take one o’ his waggons; so we did have two harses wi’ bells to their harness, and what wi’ the bells, and what wi’ the maids singin’, and the lads shoutin’, and the waggon rattlin’, and the harses’ feet a-hammerin’ the road, I can tell ’ee we did make some noise as we was a-goin’ along. The folks turned to look at us as we droved through the villages, and the childern did run after us, and did cry out ‘Bring us a fairin’, folks! Bring us a fairin’ from Shroton!’ And Tom did say—Tom was al’ays free wi’ his money—he did call out, ‘Well, be good childern; we’ll mayhap bring you back a few ginger-nuts.’

“Well, we was the best o’ friends, an’ so merry as ever we could be. I had a bonnet lined wi’ pink and a pink ribbon to tie it wi’, and a pink sash—folks did wear sashes then—and a frock—ah, I can call to mind that frock! It were the purtiest I ever did have in my life; there was little bunches o’ roses all over it a-tied together wi’ knots o’ blue ribbon—not real blue ribbon, ye know—’twas just the pattern on the stuff, but they was wonderful purty. My mother did say to I when I was a-gettin’ it out, ‘Ye’ll scarce be warm enough in that, Maria’; and I did say, ‘Oh, e—es, mother, I’ll be warm enough—there be so many on us a-goin’ we’ll keep each other warm.’ And mother didn’t say nothin’, but she just went to her box, and she did take out her best shawl as she’d been married in, and she did say, ‘There, my maid, ’ee can take that too; for thou art a careful maid and won’t let it come to harm.’

“Well, as I say, we was a merry crew! Dear heart alive, that was we! There be times, Mrs. Andrews, when I be sittin’ here so lonesome by the fire, an’ I do say to myself, ‘Was that really me—that vitty young maid! (for I were reckoned a handsome maid in those days, Mrs. Andrews) as rode in the big waggon that sunshiny day?’ Thinks I to myself, ‘It can never have been me—I must ha’ dreamed it’; and then I do look up and see the rosy plate shinin’ in the firelight, and I do say to myself, ‘Well, it were I, arter all’; and it’s somethin’ to think as a body was once so young an’ so merry.”

“True, true,” her neighbour would agree. “But you was a-tellin’ me about the childern a-runnin’ arter the waggon—I suppose it did not take you so very long to get to Shroton?”

“Nay, we did get there early in the forenoon, and then John did want me to go and see the harses jump, and the others was all for goin’ straight off on the roundabouts. ‘I’ll treat ye, Maria,’ says Tom. ‘And thank you kindly, Tom,’ says I. And then I did turn round and see poor John a-lookin’ very downhearted, so I did smile at en over my shoulder, and did say, soft like, ‘Do ’ee come, too, John.’

“‘Nay,’ says John, very quiet. ‘I think not, Maria. Two be company, and three be none, ye know.’ ‘Oh, well,’ says I, just to tease en, ‘if you like to see your old harses jumpin’ better nor to ride along of I, so ye may for all I care. Which be the way, Tom?’

“‘Why, don’t ’ee hear the music over there?’ says Tom; but ’twas hard to hear anythin’ the way the folks was a-talkin’ and a-laughin’; and what wi’ the shootin’, and the knockin’ down cocoa-nuts, and the roundabouts all a-playin’ different tunes at the same time, and the showmen shoutin’, and the drums a-beatin’, the noise was enough to dather a body.

“‘Take my arm,’ says Tom; and Annie did pair off with her young man, and Rose did catch hold o’ ’Neas as bold as brass, though he looked a bit glum, I can tell ’ee, for ’twere me as he wanted, d’ye see? And poor John were left all alone. I were feelin’ vexed, I suppose, but now, when I do look back on that day, it do seem to I as if I must ha’ been mad. My mother ’ud ha’ scolded if she’d a-known how I did behave that day. First I did go in the roundabout wi’ Tom, and then I did have another ride wi’ ’Neas, and there was Rose a-lookin’ on very cross, for Tom wouldn’t treat her; and the crosser she did look the more I did toss my head and laugh and talk wi’ ’Neas, and then ’twas Tom’s turn to pull a long face.

“And then I did go wi’ Tom in the swings, and then we did all have a game at Aunt Sally, and I did win; and ’Neas gi’ed me a bagful o’ ginger-nuts, and Tom a box for pins, and Annie’s young man come sidlin’ up too, and says he, ‘I must gi’e ye something too, Maria, for I do think,’ says he, ‘as you be queen of the fair’. And he did buy me a lot o’ sticky sweet stuff as I took one bite on and then dropped when he weren’t a-lookin’. But ye should ha’ seed Annie’s face. ‘I think I’ll go and look for John,’ says she, and her two eyes did shine much like cat’s eyes in the dark; but she didn’t go arter John, all the same.

“Well, we did come at last to one o’ the booths where they were a-sellin’ china stuff: mugs, and vases, and teapots, and cups, and plates, and as we stopped to look at ’em the old woman as was a-sellin’ did hold up the rosy plate, and says she to I, ‘Do ’ee buy en, my maid. The flowers be jist the same colour as they purty cheeks o’ yourn. You be a real rose, for sure,’ she did say, ‘and you did ought to have the rosy plate.’

“I put my hand in my pocket, and pulled out my handkercher, for I’d a-tied up my dibs in the corner. My mother did gi’e me eightpence to buy fairin’s wi’, but I hadn’t naught but a ha’penny left.

“‘That’s all I have,’ says I, holdin’ it up and laughin’; ‘will ye sell it me for that?’

“‘Nay now,’ says the old woman; ‘this here plate do cost a shillin’.’

“Well, everybody knows, of course, as these here folks do always ax twice so much as they’re willin’ to take; so Tom laughed, and says he:

“‘Come, I’ll gi’e ye sixpence for ’t.’

“‘Nay,’ says ’Neas, steppin’ up, ‘I’m the man as must give the rose o’ Shroton Fair the rosy plate.’

“So Rose Paddock did begin to smile and to smirk, and to think it were she as he meant; but I knowed very well it were me.

“‘The rose o’ the fair,’ says ’Neas, ‘must have a rosy plate for to match the roses on her cheeks and the roses on her frock.’ And poor Rose did look sour, for her frock was brown all over, wi’ jist a bunch o’ blue ribbons at the neck.

“‘I’ll gi’e ye eightpence for the rosy plate,’ says ’Neas.

“Nay, let me have it for tenpence!’ hollers Tom.

“‘ A shillin’!’ says Annie’s young man all of a sudden; it did really seem, Mrs. Andrews, as if he couldn’t hold back.

“‘Eighteenpence!’ says ’Neas.

“‘Two shillin’!’ cries Tom.”

“Tch, tch, tch,” commented Mrs. Andrews, clicking her tongue in amazed condemnation of such wanton extravagance, though she knew quite as well as Mrs. Stickly what was coming next.

“If you’ll believe me,” said Maria triumphantly, “they did run up the price o’ that there plate to five shillin’ before they’d done! Five shillin’! That were Tom’s bid; and ’Neas, he did laugh and shake his head and say, ‘’Tis half my week’s wages—I can’t go no further, Maria; ye must take the will for the deed.’

“Annie’s young man had dropped off some time before, so now the plate were knocked down to Tom; and he did put his hand in his pocket like a lord and pull out his money. But when he did come to count it there weren’t above four-and-sixpence all together.

“‘Lend me sixpence, somebody,’ says he.

“Thank ’ee for nothin’,’ says ’Neas; ‘if it be goin’ for four-and-sixpence I’ll have it myself.’

“‘An’ I’m sure I sha’n’t lend you sixpence, Tom,’ says Annie’s young man. ‘It be simple waste to gi’e so much for that there plate.’

“‘Well, ’tis a deal o’ money, surely,’ says Tom. Folks were a-gatherin’ round, d’ye see, and starin’, and laughin’, and nudgin’ of each other, and Tom began to feel he were lookin’ a fool.

“‘There’ll be naught left for a bit o’ nuncheon,’ says he, half to himself.

“‘Oh, pray don’t waste your money on I,’ says I, and the tears did spring to my eyes.

“‘That’s true, too,’ said ’Neas to Tom, ‘we ha’n’t had a bite yet, nor so much as a glass o’ beer.’

“It looked as if I were not a-goin’ to have my plate at all, though they’d all been fightin’ who was a-goin’ to give it to I. I’m sure my cheeks was redder than any roses could be, as I stood listenin’ to ’em; and all at once I raised my eyes, and there was John lookin’ across at me. And then I did feel myself go pale, and my head did begin to go round and round, I were that ashamed o’ myself and of all as had been goin’ on. But the next thing I did hear was John’s voice:—

“‘Five shillin’, did ye say? There it is; I’ll take it.’ And in another minute he’d a-put the plate in my hand.

“‘There it be, my maid,’ says he; ‘I don’t think it too much to give since you fancy it.’

“‘Well done!’ cries the folks; ‘here be the right man at last, ’tis the proper spirit for a lover.’ And then they began to clap en on the back, and to laugh, and wish him well, and ax him when the weddin’ was to be, and I don’t know what besides. I did scarce know which way to look, I were that ashamed, and yet that pleased; and John he did pull my hand through his arm, and he did lead I out of the row of booths, and away from the crowd, till we come to a quiet corner of the big field, and there we did sit down, and he did say, smilin’ like:—

“‘Next year ye’ll come to see the harses wi’ me, Maria?’

“‘E—es,’ said I, hanging down my head; ‘I’ll go wherever ye ax me, John.’

“‘Then will ye come to church wi’ me, my maid?’ says he; ‘will ye be my wife, Maria?’

“Ah, that were how we did make it up between us; and he did al’ays say as it were the rosy plate as done it. We were wed before the year were out, and the first thing Stickly did do was to make a place for that there plate upon the dresser. And as years went by and the childern come, he used to lift ’em up to see it. Each did have leave to eat out of it on its birthday—we did use to put a little bit o’ cake upon the rosy plate, and set it by the birthday child; and ye should ha’ seen how j’yful it would look.”

“Ah, sure,” commented Mrs. Andrews. “’Twould be nice to have a bit o’ cake on sich a beautiful plate, wouldn’t it, Walter? That ’ud be a nice birthday treat for any little boy.”

“I do often mind me o’ them days,” Mrs. Stickly resumed. “Dear, yes! I do often think I hear the little voices and the little feet, and see father—that’s Stickly—a-liftin’ up the youngest un to look at the plate. ’Tis very near like a book to me, that plate. I mid ha’ wrote in it all the joys and sorrows o’ my life—what I’ve a-had and what I’ve a-lost—I do mind ’em all when I look at it. Mary, the only maid I had, did cut her weddin’ cake on this here plate—she was a vitty bride—but she died wi’ her first baby; an’ John did ’list for a soldier, and were killed out abroad, and James and ’Lias died o’ the fever when they was quite little. E—es, I did lose ’em all; me and Stickly was a-left alone by the fire in the end, and now there be nobody but I. They be all a-gone before I to the New House. I’ll jine ’em there some day, Mrs. Andrews.”

And then Mrs. Andrews would agree and condole, and begin to think it was time for her to move; and Tommy and Walter would have their mufflers tied round their necks, and the party would start off homewards, while Mrs. Stickly, with a sigh and a smile, would restore the rosy plate to its place.

The little house at the hill-foot occupied, as has been said, a somewhat solitary position, being a mile from any other habitation; but it never seemed to occur to any one that in the case of illness or accident its owner would find herself in a somewhat sorry plight.

When in the middle of a bright, frosty, wintry night, therefore, Mrs. Andrews was awakened by a loud knocking at her door and piteous cries for help, and when, on throwing open her casement and leaning out, she recognised the small figure standing on her threshold as Mrs. Stickly, her astonishment was mingled with some measure of indignation.

“Goodness gracious, Mrs. Stickly, whatever brings you here at this time o’ night?—I be frightened out o’ my wits! Has anything happened?”

“What in the world be amiss?” inquired the deep tones of Mr. Andrews from under the bed-clothes.

“Oh, come down, come down, good folks, for pity’s sake!” wailed the nocturnal visitor; “my house be a-fire—’tis a mercy I weren’t burnt in my bed!”

“Your house a-fire!” gasped Mrs. Andrews in genuine concern; and thereupon ensued the hasty thud of Mr. Andrews’ bare feet upon the floor. “I’ll let you in in a minute! Dear heart alive! what a misfortune, to be sure!”

In another moment her hospitable but scantily clad figure appeared in the doorway, and a kind, warm hand drew the shivering, sobbing little figure to the kitchen within.

“Ye be as cold as any stone,” she said; “don’t ’ee cry so, Mrs. Stickly dear, Andrews ’ull be down in a minute, and I’ll call Mr. Butt, next door, and a few more chaps—they’ll soon put it out! Don’t ’ee fret so.”

“Oh, Mrs. Andrews,” gasped the poor old woman, “it be all blazin’ and roarin’—the roof be all a-fire! I think it must ha’ been a spark lit on it. It were that cold, d’ye see, I’d made me up a good fire to warm me before I went to bed—I had some nice logs, and I think a spark from ’em must have lit upon the roof. I woke up chokin’, and couldn’t see wi’ the smoke, but I dressed and ran downstairs so fast as I could, and there were more smoke in the kitchen. I could scarce find my way to the dresser, but I crope about until I got there, and ketched hold of the rosy plate, and then out I ran.”

By this time Mr. Andrews had joined them, and soon a little relief party was organised, and set off with all speed to the scene of the disaster; but long before they reached the spot the would-be rescuers agreed that the task was hopeless. The old thatch was now one sheet of flame; every window of the little dwelling was defined in fire; the crackling of the crazy woodwork and the roar of the blaze could be heard almost half a mile away. The men halted and looked at each other blankly.

“It’s ten to one if there’s a drap o’ water handy at this time o’ night,” said Abel Butt, putting into words the thought which was, indeed, present in the minds of all.

“Mrs. Stickly did say as her well was froze,” observed Andrews gloomily; “but we’d best go on all the same and see what can be done.”

They went forward again, but more slowly, and in silence. Before they reached the house, however, the roof fell in with a crash and a roar, wrecking the little home it once had sheltered.

For some weeks Maria was prostrated by the shock. Mrs. Andrews did all she could for her, but as time went on the question of ways and means became a serious one. Andrews was not in full work that winter, and there were many little mouths to feed, and, moreover, the anticipated arrival of a successor to the “twin” would shortly incapacitate Mrs. Andrews from attending to her helpless charge. All poor old Maria’s household gods had perished in the flames; she had already for some years been in the receipt of outdoor relief from the parish, on which, together with the produce of her garden, and the eggs laid by her hens, she had hitherto contrived to live. But now, what was to be done? The cottage was burnt to the ground, and the landlord, though kind and tolerant with regard to certain arrears of rent, was not inclined to rebuild it; moreover, it would be dangerous for Maria in her enfeebled state to resume her former solitary life.

Much anxious consultation on the part of friends and well-wishers resulted in the halting one day outside Mrs. Andrews’ door of a cab, from which descended a neat, bright-eyed little woman in the uniform of a hospital nurse. It was, indeed, no other than the district nurse from the town of Branston, who, at the request of the authorities, had undertaken to escort Maria to the Union.

Mrs. Andrews met her on the doorstep.

“I’ve got her ready,” she said, in an agitated whisper. “She’s dressed all but her bonnet and shawl, and they’re quite handy, but I haven’t had the heart to tell her yet. It do seem hard for a poor old body. I d’ ’low it’s cruel hard.”

“You want me to tell her, in fact,” said the nurse. “Well, it all comes in the day’s work, I suppose, and we can’t keep the cab waiting.”

She went into the kitchen, and sat down by the small shrunken figure in the elbow-chair. Unpleasant tasks had frequently fallen to Nurse Margaret’s lot during the course of her professional career: she had had to announce impending bereavement to many an anxious family; she had not infrequently given a truthful answer to those patients who, already in the death-throes, had asked if their end were near; but never yet had she been called upon to perform a duty so painful as that of making this honest, decent, gentle, little old woman realise that she was to end her days in the workhouse.

She did realise it, though. Nurse Margaret saw the wrinkled face blanch, and the mouth quiver, and the eyes grow wide with horror and alarm; and then, just as she was preparing for an outburst of tears and protests, she saw, to her surprise, the poor old creature brace herself, and presently the answer came, given with a certain quiet dignity:—

“Well, Miss, I’ll come. I don’t wish to be a burden to nobody. ’Twon’t be for long, very like.”

Mrs. Andrews came out of her entrenchment behind the door, and tied on Maria’s bonnet and shawl, with many tears and inarticulate apologies.

“Don’t ’ee take on, my dear,” said Maria, with the same gentle dignity. “It bain’t none o’ your fault. I’m very thankful to ye for what you’ve done.”

“When I’m over my trouble I’ll come to see you,” gasped the good hostess, whose face was glazed with ineffectual grief. “They’ll—they’ll take good care of ye there, I’m told; and maybe better times will come, and we can get ’ee out again.”

Maria smiled; she knew very well that she would never come out again.

“I could wish,” she said presently, “I had some little things to give the childern, Mrs. Andrews, but I’ve nought in the wide world but the clothes on my back, and the rosy plate—and that I can never part with so long as I live. Give it to me,” she said, after a pause, pointing to where her treasure lay safely ensconced in a drawer of the chest in the corner.

Mrs. Andrews produced it, but, as she crossed the kitchen towards her friend, Nurse Margaret looked at her meaningly, and slowly shook her head.

“I’m afraid they won’t let her keep it,” she said, under her breath.

“’Twill fair break her heart if they don’t,” whispered the other. “Do ’ee try an’ persuade ’em, Miss.”

The nurse shook her head again, but promised to try; and then Maria was slowly hoisted from her chair, and supported across the kitchen and into the cab. She returned Mrs. Andrews’ farewell embrace, and sat looking before her vacantly as the cab drove away.

Nurse Margaret’s surmise proved only too correct; those who passed through the stony portals of the Union found themselves as completely denuded of this world’s gear as though those gates had been in very truth the Gates of Death. Maria possessed a comfortable warm shawl, with which she was accustomed to envelop her chilly old frame when in bed; but she was informed that she could not be allowed to keep it.

When this shawl and her warm clothes were taken away from her, and she was clad in the regulation garments, she was told that probably in a week or so a kind lady who visited the Union would knit her a shawl.

“But mine be quite good,” said Maria, feebly. “I d’ ’low I’d rather have my own. ’Twouldn’t be the same. My own shawl, d’ye see—” she broke off suddenly, her lip trembling.

“Hers is quite clean,” said Nurse Margaret: “could she not be allowed to have it?” Possibly she realised something of what was passing in Maria’s mind: a lingering sense of personal dignity—the last vestige of proud independence; the natural clinging, almost childish in its tenacity, to what was her “very own”. Perhaps there were associations connected with that shawl that made it doubly precious; it might have been an heirloom, it might have been a gift—even if purchased only by the wearer herself out of long and carefully hoarded savings, how much would such a fact add to its value.

“Quite impossible,” returned the matron with decision. “We cannot make an exception. They would all want to wear their own dirty, fusty things and there would be no end to it. But everything will he taken good care of, and given back to her when she leaves.”

“She is seventy-five now,” said Nurse Margaret. “She has not a friend in the world, nor, I believe, a penny. I am afraid it is not very likely that better times will come for her.”

Maria had listened to this colloquy in a dazed, stupid way, and made no attempt to speak again until her precious plate was taken away from her, when she broke into clamorous protestations.

“Don’t, don’t ax me to part wi’ the rosy plate! It be all as I’ve a-left in the world. It’ll not take no room—I can jist keep it under my piller, and nobody ’ull know it be there. Do ’ee now, ma’am, do ’ee let me keep it!”

But again she was confronted with those terrible rules; and she was led away, weeping bitterly, to her new quarters.

She found herself in the company of some twenty old women in a large whitewashed room. Some were knitting, some were sewing, one dandling a hapless six-months-old baby, whose mother was at work in some other part of the establishment.

Maria sat down on the edge of the bed that was allotted to her, and looked vacantly round; one or two of the women spoke to her, but she scarcely heeded them.

A big bell clanged out presently, and she was told that it was for tea, and feebly followed in the wake of her companions, as they went trooping down a flagged passage and into a large room with a long table running down its centre—a bare deal table with benches on either side, each place being marked by a tin mug and a hunch of bread, on the top of which was laid a lump of butter or cheese.

Maria’s right-hand neighbour instantly began to spread her butter with her thumb. The younger woman on her left took alternate mouthfuls from the cheese and the bread.

“Bain’t there no knives nor plates?” inquired Maria, suddenly awaking to the fact of their absence.

“Can’t you see for yourself there bain’t?” was the response. “You’d best begin—they don’t give us so very long.”

“But why bain’t there no plates?” persisted Maria.

“What does it matter about plates?” grumbled the other. “I’d be willin’ enough to do wi’out plates—’tis the food as I mind. You’ve got butter—all the old folks have that, but they chuck us younger ones a bit o’ cheese as hard as a paving stone.”

Maria looked at her lump of bread with its triangular portion of butter set forth on the bare board, and wept. This was what she had come to, she, Maria Stickly, who had always throughout her long, honest, struggling life held up her head with the best! She bowed it now on her poor sunken chest, and sobbed aloud.

A long skinny hand presently hovered over her discarded portion, and her elder neighbour said, with a titter and a cunning look:—

“If ’ee don’t want it, ye’ll p’r’aps have no objection to my taking of it.”

And on its owner making no sign the transfer speedily took place.

“Nay now, that bain’t fair!” whispered the woman on the other side, angrily; “I claim half. Her and me was a-speaking together first.”

They began to quarrel over the food, while Maria sobbed on between them; the sight of their inflamed faces and the sound of their angry, coarse words seemed to her to aggravate the indignity.

“The food be thrown down to us like dogs,” she said to herself, “an’ they be a-fightin’ over it like dogs!”

Presently the altercation attracted the attention of some one in authority, and the matter was inquired into, the fact being elicited that the new-comer had disdained her appointed portion.

“I haven’t never been used to take my meals wi’out no plate!” she protested with a burst of woe, for her outraged self-respect gave her courage. “There must be plates here—folks couldn’t eat their dinner wi’out no plates, and if ’tis along o’ the washin’ up, there be a-many women here as could do it; I’d do it myself!”

But she was told not to give herself such airs. When people came to the Union they mustn’t be so particular—she must be content to do as others did. Plates indeed! there were no plates there, not even coffin plates!

This joke was duly appreciated, but it fell on poor old Maria’s bewildered ears with an ominous sound, as it were a knell of final doom. “Not even coffin plates!” she murmured to herself; and her tears ceased falling, and she sat gazing vaguely at the wrinkled hands clasped in her lap. “Not even coffin plates!” Her actual misery had hitherto prevented her from dwelling on that last inevitable end, but now it seemed to stare her in the face. A pauper’s grave—that was what awaited her, as surely as death itself.

She passed the next few days in a sort of dream of anguish, hardly taking note of her surroundings; conforming, however, to the rules of the establishment, and eating, or trying to eat, the food allotted to her without further complaint or comment. One morning, however, on endeavouring to rise, she fell sideways against her bed and fainted away.

When she recovered consciousness she found herself in a different part of the house, in the infirmary, indeed, and a nurse was supporting her, and the doctor stood by her bed. As her dim eyes fixed themselves upon his face she recognised him: it was her own doctor; he had attended her—being a young man then—when James was born, and he had done his best for Stickly in his last illness.

“Why, Mrs. Stickly,” he said cheerily, “I didn’t expect to meet an old friend.”

“No, sir,” said Maria faintly, and the dim eyes grew still more dim.

“Well, well, they will take good care of you here—you will not want for anything.”

Maria’s lip trembled, but she said nothing; she followed the doctor appealingly with her eyes as he moved about the room.

“Poor old soul,” he said to the nurse, after meeting this piteous gaze, “she is eating out her heart here, but it won’t be for long—do all you can for her, nurse; she is breaking up fast.”

The old woman did not catch the words, but she saw the compassionate glance, and observed the infirmarian’s eyes directed towards her with a certain amount of interest—merely professional interest if she had but known it—and all at once a project took shape in her mind. If she asked for the rosy plate now, perhaps they would not refuse her.

When the nurse inquired later on if she wished for anything, she took courage to proffer her petition, very feebly and incoherently. There was a plate, a plate which belonged to her, the rosy plate as she called it; the lady kept it: the lady what lived in the room downstairs. Would the nurse ask if she might have it—this in a strained and tremulous whisper—she would keep it under her bed-clothes and no one should see, but if she might just have it.

The nurse demurred, but good-naturedly, patting her pillows the while. The matron, perhaps, would not be very well pleased if it were asked for; it was a little difficult to ask her to break the rules; and, after all, the plate couldn’t do Maria much good if it was to be kept under the bed-clothes.

“Oh, yes, it would,” pleaded Maria.

“Well, then, go to sleep, and we’ll see about it in the morning.”

But when the morning came the nurse was busy; and in the afternoon the matron was out. Thus, on one pretext or another, the realisation of the poor old woman’s desire was perpetually postponed; and meanwhile she herself grew hourly weaker. The feeble voice continued to falter her request whenever the nurse came near her bed, and when she moved away Maria’s pathetic gaze followed her, until the heavy lids dropped over the weary eyes, and she forgot for a little while her unfulfilled longing.

Once, on opening her eyes after one of these brief spells of slumber, she saw the doctor’s kind, familiar face looking down at her. His voice had penetrated faintly to her inner consciousness before she had felt equal to the task of raising her lids.

“Sinking fast!”—these were the words that had fallen upon her ears.

With the opening of Maria’s eyes there had leaped into them the appeal which during her waking moments was never absent from them. The doctor bent over her kindly.

“She wants something, poor old soul,” he said. “What is it, Mrs. Stickly? What can we do for you?”

Maria’s cold, feeble hands came suddenly out from under the bed-clothes, and closed round one of his: she rallied all her strength, and raised herself a little; a light flickered for a moment in her eyes.

“I want my plate,” she gasped: “they’ve took away—my rosy plate—and they won’t give it back to me!”

“Well, to be sure, she’s at that old plate again,” said the nurse; and she began, half vexed and half laughing, to relate the story to the doctor.

Maria had fallen back on her pillows, but she still clung desperately to the doctor’s hand, and her gaze never left his face.

“I want my plate,” she repeated, when the nurse paused. “Do ’ee—ax ’em to give it to me.”

The doctor withdrew his hand, but very gently.

“In the name of heaven,” he cried, “give the poor old creature her plate! She hasn’t many hours to live.”

And so Maria’s last desperate appeal succeeded, and the doctor smiled as he saw how eagerly she hugged it to her withered bosom. He did not know that it represented for her Home, and all it had held of sweetness; that clasping it she possessed once more Youth, and Love, and Hope.

Once more he bent over her:

“All right now, Maria, eh?”

Maria smiled, and a new thought seemed to strike her. “Doctor,” she said feebly, but confidently too, “will ’ee ax ’em to put it in my coffin?”

As dawn drew nigh the night nurse paused near Maria’s bed, then, coming closer, bent over it, then, turning up the light, bent lower still. Straightening herself after a moment’s pause, she drew up the sheet softly over the old woman’s face.

But the thin arms beneath were folded close and the face wore a smile of bliss and peace, such as it might have worn more than half a century before, when, as a young mother, she had clasped her first-born to her breast.

* * * * *

“So she’s gone,” said the doctor. “Well, what did you do about the plate?”

The nurse laughed, and twisted her apron.

“It seems a silly thing,” she said, “but there! it was the last thing she asked me, and I someway felt I had to do it. I put it in her coffin.”

BECKY AND BITHEY.

No pleasanter place than Mrs. Meatyard’s dairy was to be found at any hour of the summer’s day; but it was a busy place too. At early dawn the clatter of bright cans and the lowing of cows in the adjacent yard announced milking time, and men came staggering in with great foaming pails of milk and poured it, sweet and warm, into the shallow tins prepared for it. A little later mistress and maid alike were busy skimming the thick folds of last night’s cream. On churning days the regular splash, splash in the outer milk-house was the forerunner of the pleasant labour of butter-making. On cheese days the huge vat had to be filled with gallons and gallons of milk, and then the rennet carefully measured out, and then Mrs. Meatyard and Rebecca took it in turns to “work” the curds; and what with this working, and putting the curds into presses, and running off the whey, and cleaning up afterwards, a body, as Rebecca frequently said, would be better off with four pair of hands nor with one.

Nevertheless there was something cheerful and delightful even to the workers about the bustle and stir—the sight of the rich milk, the faintly sour smell of the curds, the pure, sweet air that circled round hot faces through the wide open door, the little shifting lights and shades that played about shining tins and whitewashed walls as the branches of the trees that surrounded the house were set dancing in the wind. Yes, Thorncombe Dairy was a pleasant place, and never more so than on this particular June afternoon, when the roses outside the milk-house door were in full bloom, and the sweet odours of the old-fashioned flowers in the borders beneath the windows came floating in to mingle with the homelier scents within.

Mrs. Meatyard had duly “cleaned herself” and changed her dress, and now, with the cuffs of her stuff gown turned up, was delicately enswathing roll after roll of golden butter in small squares of gauze, and packing them, when thus protected, in baskets ready for to-morrow’s market. Old Rebecca was busy at the other end with scrubbing-brush and pail, “swilling down” the shelves. Her spare form was encased in a somewhat faded cotton garment, the sleeves of which were rolled up high; the sparse wisps of her grey hair were ruffled and untidy, but her ruddy, wrinkled old face was cheery and good-tempered, and she crooned a song to herself as she scrubbed the boards.

In the outer milk-house one of the labourers was also at work cleaning up, hissing as he used the broom as though he were rubbing down a horse, and every now and then making a great clatter with the piled-up cans.

Through the open door the imposing form of the “master” could be seen leaning over the gate which opened into the farmyard, contemplating the operations of two of the farm hands who were engaged in cleaning an outhouse. On the cobble-stones near his feet pigeons were strutting up and down, bowing and cooing; a little group of calves lay sunning themselves in a corner of the yard, flapping their ears and waving their tails as the flies teased them. Cocks and hens were crowing and clucking, pigs were grunting, sheep and lambs in the pasture behind the house were bleating, bees in the lime-blossom were humming, and throughout all the din of outdoor life Rebecca’s quavering, voice could be plainly heard:—

For Do’set dear
Then gi’e woone cheer;
D’ye hear? Woone cheer.

But louder even than her ditty sounded all at once a shrill, tuneful whistle, and the head of a young man came presently in sight, moving rapidly along the irregular line of hedge that divided the farm premises from the lane; and presently the owner of the head rounded the corner and entered the yard.

“’Tis you, Charl’?” observed Farmer Meatyard, without removing his pipe from his mouth. “You be come in nice time to fetch cows up.”

“Jist what I was a-thinkin’,” said Charl’. “I was kept a bit longer in town nor I looked for, but I did hear sich a funny bit o’ noos.”

“Did ’ee now?” inquired his father, much interested.

“’Ees, I do ’low I did. That there new show as they be all a-talkin’ about—the Agricultural Show they calls it—ye wouldn’t never think what they be goin’ to give a prize for.”

“Why, I did hear, all sarts,” returned the father a trifle impatiently. “Harses and cattle and pigs, and cheese and butter—all they kind o’ things. There bain’t nothin’ so very wonderful i’ that. ’Tis much same as other shows—voolish work, I reckon it. Ye mid have the best harse, or the best milkin’ cow in the countryside, and yet they wouldn’t give en a prize. Nay, they’d sooner gi’e it to some strange beast from Bourne or Templecombe or some sich place.”

“Well, but ye haven’t heard my tale yet,” cried the son. “Jist you try to guess the last thing as I’ve heared they be a-goin’ to give a prize for. ’Tis somethin’ livin’—I’ll tell ’ee that much, and it isn’t neither a harse nor a cow, nor a pig, nor anything as ye’d think likely.”

“A bull?” suggested Farmer Meatyard, who was not an imaginative man.

“Nay now; when I said a cow I meant male or faymale. It bain’t nothin’ o’ that kind, nor yet cocks and hens. Ye’ll never guess—’tis the queerest thing! Call Mother, and let her see if she can have a shot at it.”

“Come here, Missus!” shouted the farmer excitedly. “Come here and give your opinion. Here’s Charl’ come back from town, and he do say they be a-goin’ to give a prize at this ’ere noo Show as is a-comin’ off next month for summat altogether out o’ the common. ’Tis alive, he says, but ’tis neither bird nor beast as I can hear of.”

“Wait a bit,” said Mrs. Meatyard, folding her hands at her waist, and looking out of the rose-framed milk-house door with placid interest. “Now—I have it! Bees!”

“No. Bless you, Mother, there bain’t nothin’ wonderful nor yet funny about bees.”

“Dear heart alive, what a tease the lad be! Is it a handsome thing, Charl’, or an oncommon thing?”

“’Tis neither one nor t’other,” replied Charl’, exploding with laughter. “There, I’d best tell you, for you’d never guess. ’Tis a wold ’ooman.”

“Ah, get away, do!” growled his father, much disgusted. “Don’t ’ee go for to tell I sich cock-and-bull stories. A wold ’ooman—who’d go for to give a prize for sich as that?”

“’Tis true, though,” retorted Charl’, “’twas in every one’s mouth. A prize, they do say, will be given for the woldest faymale farm servant.”

“Well, to be sure,” ejaculated his mother, “I’ve heard o’ prizes bein’ give for the finest baby, and somebody did tell I once about a prize bein’ give for the beautifullest young girl, but I never did hear o’ givin’ prizes for wold folks.”

“’Tisn’t raysonable, I don’t think,” commented her lord. “Nay, it do seem a foolish kind o’ notion. Why, if they do go encouragin’ o’ the wold hags that way, they’ll live for ever!”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” cried Mrs. Meatyard, disregarding him, “if our Rebecca didn’t have so good a chance as any one. She’s a good age, Rebecca is. Ah, I shouldn’t wonder a bit if Rebecca was to get it. I think she is the woldest woman in these parts, without it’s Mr. Sharp’s Bithey.”

“Becky!” screamed Charl’ ecstatically. “Becky! Come here a minute. I’ve brought some good news for ’ee.”

Becky came to the door, wiping her soapy arms with her coarse apron, and smiling pleasantly if toothlessly at the young man, who was a favourite with her.

“Becky,” cried he, “how would ’ee like for to win a prize at the new Show what’s to be given in the Royal George’s grounds next month? There, Mother thinks you have got so good a chance as any one.”

“I did hear as they was a-goin’ to give a prize for butter,” said Rebecca; “but all as comes out of this ’ere house be Missus’s makin’. I wasn’t never no great hand at it. Nay, I can milk and skim and churn right enough; but I haven’t Missus’s hand on butter.”

“It bain’t the butter prize as I mean,” cried Charl’. “They be a-goin’ to give a prize for the woldest ’ooman-servant. I heared it wi’ my own ears, and the prize is to be a butter-dish, and you’ve just so good a right to it, Becky, as any other. Better! For I don’t believe there’s sich another old witch in the country.”

“Ye’re an impident chap, Charl’,” cried Rebecca, somewhat offended. “I don’t want to listen to sich a pack of rubbish! There, I’ve a-got summat else to do. Ye mid keep a civil tongue in yer head, I think. Witch, says he! Tell him to go and drive cows up, Master, else we shan’t get through with our work this day.”

“I’ll go and drive cows up right enough,” said the youth; “but ye needn’t be so highty-tighty, Beck! ’Tis truth as I be a-tellin’ ’ee. Every one be a-talkin’ of it in town.”

“Dear, to be sure!” ejaculated Rebecca, partially convinced, but looking to her mistress for confirmation of the strange statement.

“It do seem queer,” returned Mrs. Meatyard; “but it’s true, Becky; and as I was a-sayin’, I think you ought to try for it. You be turned seventy, bain’t you?”

“I reckon I must be,” said the old woman, ruminating. “My hair have been white this twenty year and more, d’ye see; and I haven’t a tooth in my head. I must be a tremenjious age, sure!”

“’Tis a bit hard to tell wi’ such as you, Beck,” remarked Farmer Meatyard, contemplating her thoughtfully. “You do seem to be sich a dried-up wold stick—ah, and have been so ever since I knowed ye. Ye’ve never looked a bit different since ye come to this ’ere village. How long ago was that, can you mind?”

“Well, now, ’tis a bit hard to reckon, Master—one year do seem so like another, and the days do follow each other so fast. I lived down at Childe-Okeford till I were thirty year of age, and then when mother died I went to service, and I were ten year or thereabouts at a farm Shillingstone way, and eight year at a public, and fifteen year at another farm a mile out of Sturminster—I think ’twas fifteen year, but it mid ha’ been eighteen—and then I’ve been here the rest of the time.”

“An’ that must be twelve year or more,” put in her mistress, “for I can call to mind as Charl’ there was only just breeched when you did come.”

“Why, woman, you must be comin’ on for eighty,” cried the farmer, half-admiringly, half-disapprovingly. “Bless me, ye haven’t no business to be alive at all!”

“He, he,” chuckled Becky. “Here I be, ye see, sir; and if there’s to be a prize for wold folks, I shouldn’t wonder if I did get it.”

“I can’t call to mind anybody else in these parts as can beat ye if your tale be true,” returned he, “unless it’s Mr. Sharp’s Bithey. She be a wonderful age, now—I shouldn’t wonder if she’s turned her four score.”

“Lard, no, sir!” cried Rebecca, with a sudden cessation of her laughter, while a flush began to mount in her shrivelled cheeks. “Bithey! Why, she’s no age at all to speak on. She’ve ha’ got very near all her teeth, and her hair—what there is of it, they do say is as black as can be under that wold woolly net as she do wear. She don’t come up to my age, Master!”

“She runs you very near though, Beck,” cried mischievous Charl’, beginning to caper with glee. “She’s oncommon hard o’ hearin’, and she do get the rheumatiz so bad in her j’ints. Ther’ be times, Mr. Sharp do say, as she can scarce walk.”

“Pooh,” cried Rebecca, with fine scorn, “what signifies that? A child mid get rheumatiz, and I’ve ha’ knowed folks so young as Missus be hard o’ hearin’. That don’t prove nothin’. There, I must give over talkin’ here, and get back to my work.”

She retired, muttering to herself and shaking her head, while Charl’, still chuckling, went off to fetch the cows.

He came back in a state of explosive excitement, and immediately called his parents out of hearing of Rebecca, who had stalked loftily past him, armed with stool and pail.

“You’ll never guess what I’ve been doin’,” he began. “Jist as I was crossin’ the lane down yonder, who should I see but wold Bithey toddlin’ along in front of me; so I hollers after her, and tells her all about the prize, and did advise her to go in for it, and the wold body is that set up about it ’tis as good as a play. She makes sure she is goin’ to win it, and thinks nothin’ at all o’ poor Beck’s chance. Lard, ’twill be rare sport to set the two wold folks one again t’other.”

The father laughed jovially, but the mother inquired in an aggrieved tone why he had interfered and lessened poor Rebecca’s chance.

“There, she’ve a-been that excited all the evenin’ thinkin’ about it—she’ll be awful disappointed if she don’t get the prize. Besides, I can’t but think ’twould ha’ been a kind o’ honour for we if she was to win it.”

“Maybe she will, all the same,” said Charl’. “I don’t believe Bithey’s half so old myself.”

And he went away to do his share of the milking.

The news soon spread all over the village that both Rebecca and Bithey intended to compete for the strange new-fangled prize that was to be given at the forthcoming show. Opinions were pretty evenly divided as to the respective merits of the two aspirants, but much amusement was caused by the seriousness and pertinacity with which each old lady advanced her claims.

On the Sunday following Charl’ mischievously brought the rivals into contact by calling back Rebecca just as she had haughtily walked past Bithey on leaving church.

“Come here, Beck, for one minute. Here’s Bithey won’t believe you are any older nor her.”

Rebecca turned, eyeing Tabitha up and down somewhat disdainfully.

“Ye may believe it or not, as ye please,” she said, “but you was a little maid goin’ to school when I was out in service.”

“What does she say?” inquired Tabitha, turning to one of the bystanders—for quite a little crowd had gathered around the two.

“She says you are no age at all worth countin’,” bawled Charl’. “She ’lows you be quite a little maid still.”

“Little maid, indeed!” retorted Bithey. “I know I must be seventy if I’m a day, and I’m a’most sure I’m a good bit more nor that. Why, I be getting that weak in the limbs I can scarce get about.”

“Anybody mid get weak in the limbs!” cried Rebecca wrathfully. “’Tisn’t no sign of age, that isn’t. When I did come to live at Thorncombe Farm, twelve or fifteen years ago, I was a staid body, as anybody mid see; but you—you was quite fresh and well-lookin’. I can mind it well. You did come up to our place for a bit o’ lard soon arter I did get there, and you was as straight and as active and as smooth and chuffy in the face—”

“Dear, dear! however can ye go for to tell sich tales, Rebecca?” groaned Bithey, much scandalised. “I can mind that day so well as you, and I can mind as you did offer to carry the lard for me as far as the gate, for, says you, ‘You do look mortal tired for sure,’ says you; ‘and ’tis a long way to carry it and you not bein’ so young as you was’.”

“Oh, faith, Becky, the case is goin’ again’ you!” shouted Charl’. “If ye said that, it shows plain as you was treatin’ Bithey respectful like, you bein’ the youngest.”

“God forgive you, Bithey!” ejaculated the dairywoman. “Have you no conscience at all? I say sich a thing! I offer to carry lard for you! ’Twas never my way to go in for payin’ compliments to folks, and I’d always plenty to do wi’out makin’ out more work for myself.”

“Come, come,” cried a fat, good-natured man who had drawn near, “don’t be fallin’ out on a Sunday! There must be some way of knowin’ your ages. Let’s see how far back you can remember, and maybe that’ll tell us summat. Can ye mind when Rectory chimbley was blowed down? I were a little chap myself then, but I can remember it.”

“Nay, that was afore my day,” said Becky, much crestfallen. “I’ve only been here a matter of twelve or fifteen year.”

“I can mind it,” cried Bithey eagerly. “I can mind it so well as if it were yesterday. I had my sampler in my hand, and when my mother did call out I run the needle very nigh an inch into my finger.”

“Then you was a little gurl, for sure!” exclaimed Rebecca triumphantly. “Ye must ha’ been quite a young maid, else ye wouldn’t ha’ been workin’ on a sampler. What year was that, Mr. Joyce?”

“Let’s see,” said Mr. Joyce meditatively. “’Twas in the year ’48, I think—’ees, I’m very near sure ’twas ’48.”

“An’ say you was ten year old then, Bithey,” went on the other claimant, with increasing animation, “say you was ten or twelve—you couldn’t ha’ been much more, else you’d ha’ had more sense nor to be working samplers—well, ’tis but a little over fifty year ago—that ’ud leave ye not much more nor sixty. Ye haven’t wore so very well, I d’ ’low; but there, ’tis plain sixty’s your age.”

“I feel sure I’m a deal more nor sixty,” protested Bithey, almost in tears. “Now I think on’t, ’twasn’t when Rectory chimbley was blowed down as I did run needle into my finger; ’twas when Mr. Sharp’s roof took fire. Can you mind when Mr. Sharp’s thatch took fire, Mr. Joyce?”

“Nay, nay, ’twas long afore my time.”

“An’ you must be comin’ on about sixty, Mr. Joyce?”

“Ah, I fancy that’s about my age.”

Tabitha cast a look of triumph towards Rebecca, who feigned unconsciousness.

“I can mind the time o’ the Crimee War,” she announced deliberately.

There was a chorus of derisive comment.

“The Crimean War! Why, that’s scarce any time ago,” said Mr. Joyce. “’Twas in the fifties, I think; ’ees, I can remember the time very well myself. That don’t go for to prove nothin’, Rebecca.”

“Well, there’s one comfort,” returned she, undaunted, “us’ll be judged by folks as don’t know us one from t’other, and they’ll be like to judge us fair. There be things for and against both on us. Bithey’s hard o’ hearin’ and wonderful stiff in her j’ints, and all that’ll be in her favour; but if they do go for to judge us wold women same way as they do judge harses, I reckon I’ve a-got the best chance.”

“How’s that?” cried Charl’.

“Why, if they go for to examine our teeth, to be sure; they’d see as I hadn’t got none.”

And further demonstrating the fact by a wide smile, Rebecca walked away, followed by a burst of mirthful applause.

On the eventful morning of the Show all the inhabitants of Thorncombe Farm assembled to see Rebecca start. Charl’ was to drive her to the town, for, as he explained, it would never do for her to let on she was hearty enough to walk such a distance.

“If I was you, Beck,” he added, “I’d make out to have a bit of a limp. ’Twould go far to make ye evener like wi’ Bithey.”

“Nay,” returned Rebecca stoutly, “I was never one for makin’ out what wasn’t true.”

“Smooth down your hair a bit under your bonnet,” advised Mrs. Meatyard anxiously. “It mid be any colour tucked away like that.”

As this injunction could be obeyed without detriment to her principles, the old woman pushed back her bonnet and pulled into greater prominence her scanty snowy side-locks. Then she climbed into the cart, with a palpitating heart, and sat clutching at her umbrella while they jogged out of the yard, and down the green lane, and out on the dusty high road.

Mr. and Mrs. Meatyard did not make their appearance at the Show till the afternoon, when most of the judging was over, and only that important part of the programme which related to various feats of horsemanship remained to be carried out.

“Let’s hunt up Becky afore we go to look at the jumpin’,” said the farmer to his wife, as they passed through the turnstile and threaded their way amid the various stalls and pens containing exhibits from all parts of the neighbourhood. Here a beautiful little red Devon cow thrust a moist protesting nose through the railings; there a sturdy black-faced ram made abortive butts with his curled horns at the passers-by; yonder a pen of cackling geese flapped distracted wings and extended yards of snowy neck with prodigious outcry; and now there was a stampede among the ever-increasing crowd, as a great cart-colt was led past floundering and kicking.

The Meatyards stared about them, and wondered and commented, and had almost forgotten Becky in their interest and excitement, when they suddenly came upon her, walking arm-in-arm with no other person than her rival Bithey.

“Why bless me, Rebecca, so here ye be!” cried the farmer. “And Bithey, too. What! Han’t ye been judged yet? An’ who’s the winner?”

“What does he say?” asked Tabitha plaintively of the other competitor, and the Meatyards noticed with surprise that her tone was meek, and indeed confiding.

“Master do want to know if we’ve a’ been judged yet, my dear,” returned Becky soothingly. “I reckon he’ll be surprised when he do hear how we’ve a-been used.”

“’Ees indeed,” sighed Bithey, and she wiped her eyes with a corner of her shawl.

“There, don’t take ’ee on, my dear,” said Rebecca, patting her hand affectionately. “The poor soul,” she explained, turning to the farmer and his wife, who were gazing at the pair open-mouthed, “the poor soul do seem to be quite undone. I d’ ’low ’twas a shame to go and disapp’int her so. ’Twill ha’ gied her quite a turn—at her age an’ all.”

“’Tis no worse for me nor ’tis for you, my dear,” put in Bithey with a groan of sympathy. “You had farther to come nor me, an’ you must be half shook to pieces a-ridin’ in that wold cart.”

“In the name o’ fortun’,” cried the exasperated Mr. Meatyard, “which on you did get the prize? There you do go chatterin’ an’ jabberin’ and neither of you will tell us which be the winner.”

“You’d never think—” began Bithey.

“’Tis the most unfairest thing you ever did hear on!” exclaimed Becky. “There was the two of us—the woldest women for miles round, I’ll go bail. I’m sure ye did only need to look at Bithey here to see it.”

“And I’m sure,” wailed Tabitha, “the very sight o’ your grey hair did ought to ha’ shamed them, Becky.”

Here the impatient farmer made a sudden lunge at them, almost after the fashion of the curly-horned prize ram, and the two old women simultaneously announced in an agitated whimper:—

“There, they didn’t give the prize to neither of us!”

“Dear heart alive! you don’t say so?” said Mrs. Meatyard, after a pause of blank amazement, while her husband uttered a shrill whistle. “Didn’t ’ee get no prize at all then?”

“Wasn’t ’ee so much as ‘’Ighly Commended,’ Beck?” cried her master, recovering from his stupor, and uttering a roar of laughter.

“No, sir,” returned Rebecca mournfully, “I didn’t get nothin’ at all—nor Bithey neither. They never took a bit of notice after they’d axed how long we’d been in our present sitooations. They went and give the butter-dish to quite a young ’ooman. I don’t think she can ha’ been more nor fifty-five. ’Ees, sir, if ye’ll believe me, a big strapping woman as stout as me and Bithey put together, and so firm on her legs as anything.”

“Whew!” whistled the farmer again, “you don’t say so! Well, I never did—there must ha’ been some reason as you didn’t know on.”

“Maybe she was blind,” suggested Mrs. Meatyard. “That ’ud be a p’int in her favour.”

“No more blind nor yourself, ma’am,” returned Becky almost triumphantly. “She’d a-been thirty year in the one place—that was all as I could hear as she could say for herself, and they went and give her the butter-dish wi’out no more talk than that. So, when I did see how upset poor Bithey was—an’ she so troubled with the rheumatiz, poor wold body—I jist says to her, says I, ‘You take my arm, my dear,’ says I; ‘you jist come along of I.’ And she were glad enough to do it.”

“I d’ ’low I was,” agreed her whilom rival. “I reckon I thought it oncommon kind. ’Ees,’ says I, ‘Becky love,’ says I, ‘I take it oncommon kind o’ you to help me same as you’re a-doin’ of, for ye bain’t so young yourself,’ says I.”

Mr. Meatyard slapped his thigh and shouted with laughter.

“You’ve changed your note, I see—both on you,” he exclaimed as soon as he could speak. “Well, and where are you bound for now?”

“Why, d’ye see, sir,” said Becky, “her an’ me is both tired o’ this—we are—jist about! And so she says to me, says she, ‘Let’s go over to one o’ them little booths over there and set down for a bit, and rest us.’ Didn’t ye, Bithey?”

“I did,” said Bithey, “and I says, ‘Becky,’ says I, ‘arter all this standin’, an’ all this talkin’, and all the dust and sawdust flyin’ about, I’m awful dry,’ I says; ‘what would you say,’ says I, ‘to a bottle of Pop?’”

The farmer laughed again, but his wife strongly advised the old couple to have recourse to that restorative, and they therefore toddled away together to drown the memory of their differences and, if possible, of their disappointment in a sparkling and innocuous glass.

THE LOVER’S WRAITH.

“Well, I don’t believe in no such nonsense. Folks do get a-talkin’ and a-carryin’ tales fro’ one to the other, but I never met anybody yet as see a ghost, and I don’t believe nobody ever did!”

“You are wrong for once then,” cried Martha; and she pulled away her arm, the elbow of which had till then been linked in Sam Bundy’s—for the two were “walking” in orthodox fashion—and turned round to face him, an angry flush mounting in her cheeks.

Martha Dale was a very pretty girl, and never more so than in her working dress, which, being of pink cotton, intensified the glow on her cheeks and threw into yet stronger relief the darkness of eyes and hair. A little fitful evening breeze was now playing with the dusky tendrils about her brow, setting one tiny curl dancing, indeed, after a fashion which Sam would have found tantalising at any other time; but now he was too much in earnest.

“It do seem sich a pity for a sensible maid same as you to be took in by sich rubbish.”

“Thank ’ee,” rejoined Martha. “I s’pose my own grandma is a liar then, for ’twas she as told me the tale, and she did say as she saw it wi’ her own eyes.”

“What, a ghost?”

“No, it couldn’t ha’ been a ghost for ’twas the sperret of a man as was alive. ’Twas the custom, she says, for all the young folks to wait outside church-porch at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and if they was to get married during the year they’d see the sperrets of them they was to get married with go into the church and come out again. And they’d see the sperret, or the shape, or whatever ye mid call it, of them as was to die during the year too—only that kind didn’t never come out o’ the church again; they did jist walk in wi’ grave sorrowful faces, and did seem to bide there. But my grandma she telled me often how plain she saw granfer a-comin’ out of church—there, he did pass so close to her she could very nigh ha’ touched him, only she was afeared. And sure enough he axed her two months arter to the very day.”

Sam walked along in silence, chewing a blade of grass which he had plucked from beneath the hedge; his broad chip hat was set somewhat at the back of his head, and his open sunburnt face, thus fully exposed to view, wore an expression of incredulity and dissatisfaction.

“Ye don’t believe me, I see,” said Martha quickly.

“Oh, I don’t say that. I b’lieve ye think you are speakin’ the truth—’tis as true as you heared it—’tisn’t as if you was tryin’ to make me believe as you’d seen the thing yourself.”

“Well, then,” said Martha, with a flash in her black eyes, “I’ll be tellin’ you that, come next Midsummer Eve. I’ll go myself, and stand in church-porch, and maybe I’ll see Bob Ellery a-comin’ out.”

“Bob Ellery!” ejaculated Sam, stopping short again, and throwing away his blade of grass. “Is it him ye’re thinkin’ of lookin’ for?”

“Why not?” said Martha, slightly raising her voice; “as well him as another.”

“Well,” said Sam, striking the nailed heel of his heavy boot into the ground, “he’s just the one to be up to sich foolishness—the biggest sammy between this and Dorchester.”

“I wouldn’t be makin’ free wi’ your own name,” retorted the girl sarcastically. “I know one sammy as ain’t so far off. But ye needn’t be turnin’ up your nose at Bob Ellery, Mr. Sam Bundy—him and me’s very thick, and I don’t like to hear my friends abused.”

“Now look ye here, Martha,” said Sam, controlling his rising anger. “This here be real foolish talk between you and I, as has been a-walkin’ ever since Christmas. If you was to look for anybody a-comin’ out o’ church, it should be me!”

“Oh, but you are much too grand to think o’ lettin’ your sperret do any sich thing. Bob bain’t so stuck up—he don’t set up for being no wiser than the rest of us. But as for you—if we was to spill the salt between us I don’t suppose you’d ever think o’ throwin’ a pinch over your shoulder.”