ted to a good deal of ridicule. The
children made fun of her on her way home from school, and called her
"daft Lizzie"; the old folks, when they heard her muttering to herself,
would shrug their shoulders and pass the remark that she was "nobbut a
hauf-rocked 'un"--an insult peculiarly galling to her mother.

"A hauf-rocked 'un!" she would exclaim. "Nay, I rocked her misel i' t'
creddle while my shackles fair worked. Shoo taks after her dad, that's
what's wrang wi' Lizzie. A feckless gowk was Watmough; he couldn't frame
to do owt but play t' fiddle i' t' sky-parlour, or sit ower t' fire
eatin' fat-shives."

Lizzie's daftness was not a serious matter; it consisted partly in a
certain dreaminess, which brought a yonderly look into her eyes, and
made her inattentive to what was going on around her, and partly in that
habit of talking to herself which has already been referred to. I had
won her confidence and friendship from the time when I rescued her
"pricky-back urchin" from being kicked to death by the farm boys, who
declared that hedgehogs always made their way into the byres and milked
the cows. Since then we had had many talks together, but this was the
first time that I had accompanied her when she went to milk.

Milking in summer-time, when the cows are out at grass, is pleasant
enough, but it is different of a winter evening. Then one gropes one's
way by the light of the stable lantern through the rain-sodden fields to
the cowshed, the reeking atmosphere of which often makes one feel faint
as one plunges into it from out of the frosty air. But Lizzie liked the
work at all seasons, and was never so much at ease as when she was
firmly planted on her stool, her curly head butting into a cow's ribs,
and the warm milk swishing rhythmically into her pail. There were three
cows in the byre, and she had called them after her aunts. Eliza, like
her namesake, was "contrairy," and had to have her hind legs hobbled
lest she should kick over the pail. Molly and Anne were docile beasts
that chewed the cud with bovine complacency. It was Lizzie's habit to
tell the cows stories as she milked, making them up as she went along;
but to-day she found a better listener in myself.

Our talk was at first of cows; thence it passed to village gossip, pigs,
hedgehogs, and so back to cows once more. Knowing the imaginative bent
of her mind, I put the question to her: "Wouldn't you like to know just
what becomes of the milk you send off t