her be out at work."

"Is that your grandfather?" as they caught sight of a very old man on a
chair by the door, in the sun.

"Yes, ma'am. Will you come in and see him?"

He was a very old man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean,
and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully
worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins. He was very
civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help
of his stout stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg
him not to move. He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.

"I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma'am," and he put
his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.

Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him. She
supposed his daughter was out at work.

"Yes, ma'am, with Farmer Goodenough--a charing to-day it is."

"Washing," screamed the little girl.

"She was off at five o'clock this morning," he went on. "She do work
hard, my daughter Bess, and she's a good one to me, and so is little Liz
here. Thank the Lord for them."

"And her husband is dead?"

"Yes, ma'am. Fell off a haystack three years ago, and never spoke no
more. We have always kept off the parish, ma'am. This bit of a cottage
was my poor wife's, and she do want to leave it to the boy; but she be
but frail, poor maid, and if she gave in, there'd be nothing for it but
to give up the place and go to the workhouse; and there's such a lot
there as I could not go and die among."

He spoke it to the sympathising faces, not as one begging, and they
found out that all was as he said. He had seen better days, and held
his head above the parish pay, and so had his son-in-law but the early
death of poor Mole, and the old man's crippled state, had thrown the
whole maintenance of the family on the poor young widow, who was really
working herself to death, while, repairs being impossible, the cottage
was almost falling down.

"Oh, what a place, and what a dear old man!" cried the ladies, as they
went out. "Well, we can do something here. I'll come and read to him
every week," exclaimed Dora.

"And I will knit him a warm jacket," said Mary, "and surely Edmund could
help them to prop up that wretched cottage."

"What a struggle their lives must have been, and so patient and good!
Where are we going now?"

"I believe that is the workhouse, behind the church," said Mary. "That
rough-tiled