ing dimly that seventy years ago he had been
just as proper a young chap, and had made love in the same way. Lord,
Lord, yes! He had been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye. Then,
too, there were the vans, heavy-loaded and closed, and coming along
slowly. Every few days, at first, there had come a van from "Lunnon."
Going to the Court, of course. And to sit there, and hear the women talk
about what might be in them, and to try to guess one's self, that was a
rare pastime. Fine things going to the Court these days--furniture and
grandeur filling up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them look
like other big houses--same as Westerbridge even, so the women said.
The women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, and
were beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something more
interesting to talk about than children's worn-out shoes, and whooping
cough.

Doby heard everything first from them. "Dang the women, they always
knowed things fust." It was them as knowed about the smart carriages
as began to roll through the one village street. They were gentry's
carriages, with fine, stamping horses, and jingling silver harness, and
big coachmen, and tall footmen, and such like had long ago dropped off
showing themselves at Stornham.

"But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel, and what's being
done at the Court, and they know what it means," said young Mrs. Doby.
"And they want to see her, and find out what she's like. It's her brings
them."

Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what she was like. That
straight, slim back of hers, and the thick twist of black hair, and the
way she had of laughing at you, as cheery as if a bell was ringing. Aye,
he knew all about that.

"When they see her once, they'll come agen, for sure," he quavered
shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages with vivid
eagerness. If a day or two passed without his seeing one, he grew
fretful, and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being neglected!
"None to-day, nor yet yest'day," he would cackle. "What be they folk
a-doin'?"

Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to see it, had
struck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped in almost every day to
talk and sit at his window. She was a young thing, by comparison, and
could bring him lively news, and, indeed, so stir him up with her gossip
that he was in danger of becoming a young thing himself. Her groceries
and h