ow moor nor a floy. Says 'ee
knaws there nowt wrong wi' 'is 'eart. Mout be roight--how'siver, sarten
sewer, 'is 'EAD'S a' in a muddle! Toims 'ee goes off stamrin' and
starin' at nowt, as if 'ee a'nt a n'aporth o' sense. How'siver I be
doing my duty by 'em--and 'ere's 'is porritch when a' cooms--'gin a' be
sick or maad."

What the American understood of the girl's speech and manner struck
her as having very little sympathy with either her aged relative or her
present visitor. And there was a certain dogged selfish independence
about her that Miss Desborough half liked and half resented. However,
Miss Amelyn did not seem to notice it, and, after leaving a bottle of
port for the grandfather, she took her leave and led Sadie away. As they
passed into the village a carriage, returning to the Priory, filled with
their fellow guests, dashed by, but was instantly pulled up at a word
from Lord Algernon, who leaped from the vehicle, hat in hand, and
implored the fair truant and her companion to join them.

"We're just making a tour around Windover Hill, and back to luncheon,"
he said, with a rising color. "We missed you awfully! If we had known
you were so keen on 'good works,' and so early at it, by Jove! we'd have
got up a 'slummin' party,' and all joined!"

"And you haven't seen half," said Lord Beverdale from the box. "Miss
Amelyn's too partial to the village. There's an old drunken retired
poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it's death to
approach, except with a large party. There's malignant diphtheria over
at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the keeper's, and an old
woman who has been bedridden for years."

But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling. She thanked him,
but said she had just seen an old woman "who had been lying in bed for
twenty years, and hadn't spoken the truth once!" She proposed "going
outside of Lord Beverdale's own preserves of grain-fed poor," and
starting up her own game. She would return in time for luncheon--if she
could; if not, she "should annex the gruel of the first kind incapable
she met."

Yet, actually, she was far from displeased at being accidentally
discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim of
the morning. One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her frocks
and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now by this
butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society, and soil
her pretty wings on the haun