without any
view to his own supper.

"Lord Castlewood spoke to me about a Mrs. Price--the housekeeper, is
she not?" I asked at last, being so accustomed to like what I could get,
that the number of dishes wearied me.

"Oh yes, miss," said Stixon, very shortly, as if that description
exhausted Mrs. Price.

"If she is not too busy, I should like to see her as soon as these
things are all taken away. I mean if she is not a stranger, and if she
would like to see me."

"No new-comers here," Mr. Stixon replied; "we all works our way up
regular, the same as my lad is beginning for to do. New-fangled ways is
not accepted here. We puts the reforming spirits scrubbing of the steps
till their knuckles is cracked and their knees like a bean. The old lord
was the man for discipline--your grandfather, if you please, miss. He
catched me when I were about that high--"

"Excuse me, Mr. Stixon; but would he have encouraged you to talk as you
so very kindly talk to me, instead of answering a question?"

I thought that poor Stixon would have been upset by this, and was angry
with myself for saying it; but instead of being hurt, he only smiled and
touched his forehead.

"Well, now, you did remind me uncommon of him then, miss. I could
have heard the old lord speak almost, though he were always harsh and
distant. And as I was going for to say, he catched me fifty years agone
next Lammas-tide; a pear-tree of an early sort it was; you may see the
very tree if you please to stand here, miss, though the pears is quite
altered now, and scarcely fit to eat. Well, I was running off with my
cap chock-full, miss--"

"Please to keep that story for another time," I said; "I shall be most
happy to hear it then. But I have a particular wish, if you please, to
see Mrs. Price before dark, unless there is any good reason why I should
not."

"Oh no, Miss Erma, no reason at all. Only please to bear in mind,
miss, that she is a coorous woman. She is that jealous, and I might say
forward--"

"Then she is capable of speaking for herself."

"You are right, miss, there, and no mistake. She can speak for herself
and for fifty others--words enough, I mean, for all of them. But I would
not have her know for all the world that I said it."

"Then if you do not send her to me at once, the first thing I shall do
will be to tell her."

"Oh no, miss, none of your family would do that; that never has been
done anonymous."

I assured him that my threat w