he real truth,
because she was as fond of me as I was of her; and she has been as
happy as the day is long, all her life long, and so she deserves.

And as for me, I stayed on with uncle at the farm until he died of
that bronchitis I told you of, and the little wing was built up
again, and the lichen has grown on it, so that now you could hardly
tell it is only forty years old; and he left me all his money, and
when he died, and Whitecroft went to a distant relation, I came here
to do what bits of good I could.

And I have never told the truth about this to any one but you. I
couldn't have told it to any one as cared, but I know you don't. So
that makes it easy.

HER MARRIAGE LINES

I

I HAD never been out to service before, and I thought it a grand
thing when I got a place at Charleston Farm. Old Mr. Alderton was
close-fisted enough, and while he had the management of the farm it
was a place no girl need have wished to come to; but now Mr.
Alderton had given up farming this year or two, and young Master
Harry, he had the management of everything. Mr. Alderton, he stuck
in one room with his books, which he was always fond of above a bit,
and must needs be waited on hand and foot, only driving over to
Lewes every now and then.

Six pounds a year I was to have, and a little something extra at
Christmas, according as I behaved myself. It was Master Harry who
engaged me. He rode up to our cottage one fine May morning, looking
as grand on his big grey horse, and says he, through the stamping
clatter of his horse's hoofs on the paved causeway--

'Are you Deresby's Poll?' says he.

And I says, 'Yes; what might you be wanting?'

'We want a good maid up at the farm,' says he, patting his horse's
neck--'Steady, old boy--and they tell me you're a good girl that
wants a good place, and ours is a good place that wants a good girl.
So if our wages suit you, when can you come?'

And I said, 'Tuesday, if that would be convenient.'

And he took off his hat to me as if I was a queen, though I was
floury up to the elbows, being baking-day, and rode off down the
lane between the green trees, and no king could have looked
handsomer.

Charleston is a lonesome kind of house. It's bare and white, with
the farm buildings all round it, except on one side where the big
pond is; and lying as it does, in the cup of the hill, it seems to
shut loneliness in and good company out.

I was to be under Mrs. Blake, who had been h