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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
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