do not understand their necessity. I am busy at home
too. I am waging a crusade against a dreadful place called Morte, and a
cottage warfare with our own steward. These things do not interest Mr.
Chiverton, but he gives me his support. I tell him Morte must disappear
from the face of the earth, but there is a greedy old agent of Mr.
Gifford's, one Blagg, who is terribly in the way. Then I have
established a nursery in connection with the school, where the mothers
can leave their little children when they go to work in the fields."

"Do they work in the fields hereabouts?"

"Oh yes--at hoeing, weeding and stone-picking, in hay-time and harvest.
Some of them walk from Morte--four miles here and four back. There is a
widow whose husband died on the home-farm--it was thought not to answer
to let widows remain in the cottages--this woman had five young
children, and when she moved to Morte, Mr. Chiverton kindly kept her on.
I want her to live at our gates."

"And what does she earn a day?"

"Ninepence. Of course, she has help from the parish as well--two
shillings a week, I think, and a loaf for each child besides."

A queer expression flitted over Bessie's face; she drew a long breath
and stretched her arms above her head.

"Yes, I feel it is wrong: the widow of a laborer who died in Mr.
Chiverton's service, who spends all her available strength in his
service herself, ought not to be dependent on parish relief. I put it to
him one day with the query, Why God had given him such great wealth? A
little house, a garden, the keep of a cow, a pig, would have made all
the difference in the world to her, and none to him, except that her
children might have grown up stout and healthy, instead of ill-nurtured
and weakly. But you are tired. Let us go and take a few turns in the
winter-garden. It is the perfection of comfort on a windy, cold day like
this."

Bessie acceded with alacrity. Castlemount was not the building of one
generation, but it owed its chief glories to its present master. Mr.
Chiverton had found it a spacious country mansion, and had converted it
into a palace of luxury and a museum of art--one reason why Morte had
thriven and Chiver-Chase become almost without inhabitant. Bessie
Fairfax was half bewildered amongst its magnificences, but its
winter-garden was to her the greatest wonder of all. She was not,
however, sufficiently acclimatized to an artificial temperature to enjoy
it long. "It is delicious, bu