som of the hawthorn hedge.

"There goes my white riband," thought the ignorant girl, and yet even
with the quick fear there welled a fresh and fierce determination in her
undisciplined heart.

Her egotism, if not her superstition, was reproved when she reached
the farmhouse, and old Madgy, the midwife, coming to the pump for more
water, met her with news of what had happened not half an hour earlier.
The shallow creek of Upper Farm had been invaded by a violent and dark
tide, on whose ebb two lives had been borne away. Loveday, staring up
at Primrose's room, saw the withered hand of old Mrs. Lear draw the
curtains across the window behind which lay a dead mother and a babe
that had never lived.

CHAPTER X: IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT
ATTEND A FUNERAL

Chapter X

IN WHICH LOVEDAY DOES NOT ATTEND A FUNERAL

"A couple of months too soon her pains took her," said Madgy; "she has
been fretting and wisht these weeks past, with her husband always after
some young faggot up country and herself sick with envy at the girls
that could still dance with the chaps. She had no woman's heart in her,
poor soul, to carry her woman's burden. Ah! many's the strange things
in women I see at my trade," and Madgy wrung out a cloth and mumbled to
herself--her old mouth folded inwards, as though she perpetually turned
all the secrets that she knew over and over within it.

"Your mother died because she'd set her heart on death," she added, to
Loveday, "but this one died because she dedn' know how to catch hold on
life. She'd a weak hand on everything she touched, because she never
wanted nawthen enough."

"Wanting's not getting, however hard you want," said Loveday.

"Ah! isn't it? It's getting, though you may have sorrow packed along wi'
it. Out of my way, maid; I must be busy overstairs." And old Madgy went
to ply the second part of her trade, for she washed the dead as well as
the newly-born; she laid coins on the eyes of the old and flannels on
the limbs of the young with the same smile between her rheumy lids and
on her folded mouth.

Loveday stayed awhile and helped Mrs. Lear, by milking the puzzled,
lowing cows and pouring the milk into the pans, but all the time they
worked the dead girl's name was never mentioned between them. It was
as though Loveday were making amends for the ill words that had been
between them by refraining her tongue from everything but her first
few accents of pity and amaze.

T