ee Hetty 'll be all right when she's
got a good husband and children of her own."

"I don't want to be hard upo' the gell. She's got cliver fingers of her
own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi'
the butter, for she's got a cool hand. An' let be what may, I'd strive
to do my part by a niece o' yours--an' THAT I've done, for I've taught
her everything as belongs to a house, an' I've told her her duty often
enough, though, God knows, I've no breath to spare, an' that catchin'
pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi' them three gells in the house I'd
need have twice the strength to keep 'em up to their work. It's
like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one,
another's burnin'."

Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal
from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a
sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery
which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with
shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door,
and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked
in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she always
bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It was
well: for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping heart,
rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She dared
not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let
it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again. We shall know how
it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time
and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her
mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty's.

Dinah delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of that
tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of
the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she
could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering her
room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful
fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow
elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying,
and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in
silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be
only one more night on which she w