en men on their touchiest
point, when women are pushed aside, and justice and religion as well. We
might be living in a heathen land, for aught that morality has to say.

Mrs. Pagnell fussed about being seen on her emergence from the Jolly
Cricketers. Aminta sent Weyburn to spy for the possible reappearance
of Mr. Morsfield. He reported a horseman; a butcher-boy clattered by.
Aminta took the landlady's hand, under her aunt's astonished gaze, and
said: 'I shall not forget your house and your attention to us.' She
spoke with a shake of her voice. The landlady curtseyed and smiled,
curtseyed and almost whimpered. The house was a poor one, she begged to
say; they didn't often have such guests, but whoever came to it they did
their best to give good food and drink.

Hearing from Weyburn that the chariot was bound to go through
Winchester, she spoke of a brother, a baker there, the last surviving
member of her family and, after some talk, Weyburn offered to deliver a
message of health and greeting at the baker's shop. There was a waving
of hands, much nodding and curtseying, as the postillion resumed his
demi-volts--all to the stupefaction of Mrs. Pagnell; but she dared not
speak, she had Morsfield on the mouth. Nor could she deny the excellent
quality of the bread and butter, and milk, too, at the sign of the Jolly
Cricketers. She admitted, moreover, that the food and service of the
little inn belonged in their unpretentious honesty to the kind we
call old English: the dear old simple country English of the brotherly
interchange in sight of heaven--good stuff for good money, a matter with
a blessing on it.

'But,' said she, 'my dear Aminta, I do not and I cannot understand looks
of grateful affection at a small innkeeper's wife paid, and I don't
doubt handsomely paid, for her entertainment of you.'

'I feel it,' said Aminta; tears rushed to her eyelids, overflowing, and
her features were steady.

'Ah, poor dear! that I do understand,' her aunt observed. 'Any little
kindness moves you to-day; and well it may.'

'Yes, aunty,' said Aminta, and in relation to the cause of her tears she
was the less candid of the two.

So far did she carry her thanks for a kindness as to glance back through
her dropping tears at the sign-board of the Jolly Cricketers; where two
brave batsmen cross for the second of a certain three runs, if only the
fellow wheeling legs, face up after the ball in the clouds, does but
miss his catch: a gran