pirit of her touch, whispered, like one who had accepted a bond
of secresy: "Th' old farmer's well. So's Rhoda--my darkie lass. They've
taken on a bit. And then they took to religion for comfort. Th' old
farmer attends Methody meetin's, and quotes Scriptur' as if he was fixed
like a pump to the Book, and couldn't fetch a breath without quotin'.
Rhoda's oftenest along with your rector's wife down there, and does
works o' charity, sicknussin', readin'--old farmer does the preachin'.
Old mother Sumfit's fat as ever, and says her money's for you. Old
Gammon goes on eatin' of the dumplins. Hey! what a queer old ancient he
is. He seems to me to belong to a time afore ever money was. That Mr.
Robert's off...never been down there since he left, 'cause my darkie
lass thought herself too good for him. So she is!--too good for anybody.
They're going to leave the farm; sell, and come to London."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Dahlia; "not going to leave the dear old farm, and
our lane, and the old oaks, leading up to the heath. Are they? Father
will miss it. Rhoda will mourn so. No place will ever be like that to
them. I love it better than any place on earth."

"That's queer," said Anthony. "Why do you refuse to go, or won't
let your husband take you down there; if you like the place that
raving-like? But 'queer''s your motto. The truth is this--you just
listen. Hear me--hush! I won't speak in a bawl. You're a reasonable
being, and you don't--that's to say, you do understand, the old farmer
feels it uncomfortable--"

"But I never helped him when I was there," said Dahlia, suddenly
shrinking in a perceptible tremble of acute divination. "I was no use. I
never helped him--not at all. I was no--no use!"

Anthony blinked his eyes, not knowing how it was that he had thus been
thrown out of his direct road. He began again, in his circumlocutory
delicacy: "Never mind; help or no help, what th' old farmer feels
is--and quite nat'ral. There's sensations as a father, and sensations as
a man; and what th' old farmer feels is--"

"But Rhoda has always been more to father than I have," Dahlia cried,
now stretching forward with desperate courage to confront her uncle,
distract his speech, and avert the saying of the horrible thing she
dreaded. "Rhoda was everything to him. Mother perhaps took to me--my
mother!"

The line of her long underlie drawn sharp to check her tears, stopped
her speaking.

"All very well about Rhoda," said Anthony. "She's e