eat and
important Mr Benson was prepared to be interested in Lilac's choice.

She often wondered, as day after day went by so quickly and left her
still undecided, what her mother would have advised her to do. But
then, if her mother had been alive, all this would not have happened.
She tried nevertheless to imagine what she would have said about it, and
to remember past words which might be of help to her now. "Stand on
your own feet and don't be beholden to anyone." Certainly by taking
this situation she would follow that advice, and child though she was,
she knew it might be the beginning of greater things. If she filled
this place well she might in time get another, and be worth even more
money. But then, could she leave the farm? the home which had sheltered
her when she had been left alone in the world. Who would take her
place? No one could deny now that she would leave a blank which must be
filled up. She could hardly bear to think of a stranger standing in her
accustomed spot in the dairy, handling the butter, looking out of the
little ivy-grown window, taking charge of the poultry. "They'll feed
'em different, maybe," she thought; "and they won't get half the eggs, I
know they won't." How hard it would be, too, to leave the faces she had
known from childhood, all so familiar, and some of them so dear: not
human faces alone, but all sorts of kind and friendly ones, belonging to
the dumb animals, as she called them. She would miss the beasts sorely,
and they would miss her: the cows she was learning to milk, the great
horses who jingled their medals and bowed their heads so gently as she
stood on tiptoe to feed them, the clever old donkey who could unfasten
any gate and let all the animals out of a field: the pigs, even the
sheep, who were silliest of all, knew her well and showed pleasure at
her coming. She looked with affection, too, at the bare little attic,
out of whose window she had gazed so often with eyes full of tears at
the white walls of her old home on the hillside. How hard it had been
to leave it, and now it made her almost as sad to think of going away
from the farm.

But then--there was the money, and although Mrs Leigh said nothing in
favour of her going to this new place, Lilac had a feeling that she
really wished it, and would be disappointed if she gave it up. Everyone
said it was such a chance!

It was not altogether a fancy on Lilac's part that everyone at the farm
looked a