e got. But I dunno. There was your poor mother, she was
took, and now I shan't see you no more. 'Tain't as I see you often, but
I know you might drop in anywhen and there's comfort in that. Lor'! I
shouldn't be standing here now if you hadn't come in that night--I was
pretty nigh gone home that time. Might a been better p'r'aps for me and
Dan'l too if I had. But you meant it kind."

"Maybe I shan't go away after all," said Lilac soothingly.

"You're one of the lucky ones," continued Mrs Wishing. "I allers said
that. Fust you get taken into a beautiful home like this, and then you
get a place as a gal twice your age would jump at. Some gets all the
ups and some gets all the downs. But _I_ dunno!"

She went on her way with a weary hitch of the basket on her arm, and a
pull at her thin shawl. Then Bella's voice sounded beseechingly on the
stairs:

"Oh, _do_ come here a minute, Lilac."

Bella was generally to be found in her bedroom just now, stitching away
at various elegancies of costume. She turned to her cousin as she
entered, and said with a puzzled frown:

"I'm in ever such a fix with this skirt. I can't drape it like the
picture do what I will, it hangs anyhow. And Agnetta can't manage it
either."

Agnetta stood by, her face heated with fruitless labour, and her mouth
full of pins.

Lilac examined the skirt gravely.

"You haven't got enough stuff in it," she said. "You'll have to do it
up some other way."

"Pin it up somehow, then, and see what you can do," said Bella. "I'm
sick and tired of it."

Lilac was not quite without experience in such things, for she had often
helped her cousins with their dressmaking, and she now succeeded after a
few trials in looping up the skirt to Bella's satisfaction.

"_That's_ off my mind, thank goodness!" she exclaimed. "You're a
neat-fingered little thing; I don't know what we shall do without you."

It was a small piece of praise, but coming from Bella it sounded great.

Lilac's affairs, her probable departure from the farm and how she would
be much missed there, were much talked of in the village just now. The
news even reached Lenham, carried by the active legs and eager tongue of
Mrs Pinhorn, who, with many significant nods, as of one who could tell
more if she chose, gave Mr Benson to understand that he might shortly
find a difference in the butter. It was not for _her_ to speak, with
Ben working at the farm since a boy, but--So even the gr