fast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite
Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to
her--things such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and picking
up things she let fall. If Martha had been a well-trained fine young
lady's maid she would have been more subservient and respectful and
would have known that it was her business to brush hair, and button
boots, and pick things up and lay them away. She was, however, only an
untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland cottage
with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of
doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who
were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about and tumble
over things.

If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would
perhaps have laughed at Martha's readiness to talk, but Mary only
listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner. At first
she was not at all interested, but gradually, as the girl rattled on in
her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.

"Eh! you should see 'em all," she said. "There's twelve of us an' my
father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mother's put
to it to get porridge for 'em all. They tumble about on th' moor an'
play there all day an' mother says th' air of th' moor fattens 'em. She
says she believes they eat th' grass same as th' wild ponies do. Our
Dickon, he's twelve years old and he's got a young pony he calls his
own."

"Where did he get it?" asked Mary.

"He found it on th' moor with its mother when it was a little one an' he
began to make friends with it an' give it bits o' bread an' pluck young
grass for it. And it got to like him so it follows him about an' it
lets him get on its back. Dickon's a kind lad an' animals likes him."

Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always thought
she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon,
and as she had never before been interested in any one but herself, it
was the dawning of a healthy sentiment. When she went into the room
which had been made into a nursery for her, she found that it was rather
like the one she had slept in. It was not a child's room, but a grown-up
person's room, with gloomy old pictures on the walls and heavy old oak
chairs. A table in the center was set with a good substantial breakfast.
But she had always h