chair and looked around the cottage.

"I am glad to see that you keep your place clean and respectable,
Elizabeth," she said. "I wish you good afternoon."

Elizabeth never rose from her chair to see her visitor to the door--(an
omission which Mrs. de Tracy was not likely to overlook)--she just sat
there gazing stupidly around the tiny kitchen and muttering a word or
two now and then. At last she got up and tottered to the garden.

"I'll 'ave to leave it all--leave the old bench as me William did put
for me with his own 'ands, and leave Duckie, Duckie can't never go to
Exeter if I goes there,--and leave the plum tree." She limped across
the little bit of sunny turf, and stood under the white canopy of the
blossoming tree, leaning against its slender trunk. "Pity 't is we
ain't rooted in the ground same as the trees are," she mused. "Then no
one couldn't turn us out; only the Lord Almighty cut us down when our
time came; Lord knows I'm about ready for that now--grave-ripe as you
may say." She leaned her poor weary old head against the tree stem and
wept, ready, ah! how ready, at that moment, to lay down the burden of
her long and toilsome life.

"Good afternoon, Nursie dear!" a clear voice called out in her ear,
and Elizabeth started to find that Robinette had tip-toed across the
grass and was standing close beside her. She lifted her tear-stained
face up to Robinette's as a child might have done.

"I've to quit, Missie," she sobbed, "to leave me 'ome and Duckie and
the plum tree, an' I've no place to go to, and naught but my ten
pounds to live on--and 't won't keep me without I've the plum tree,
not when I've rent to pay from it; not if I don't eat nothing but tea
an' bread never again!"

In a moment Robinette's arms were about her: her soft young cheeks
pressed against the withered old face.

"What's this you're saying, Nurse?" she cried. "Leaving your cottage?
Who said so?"

"It's true, dear, quite true; 'asn't the lady 'erself been here to
tell me so?"

"Was that what Aunt de Tracy was here about? I met her on the road
five minutes ago; she said she had been here on business! But tell me,
Nurse, why does she want you to leave? Are you going to get a better
cottage? Does she think this one isn't healthy for you?"

"No, no, dear, 't isn't that, she 've sold the cottage over me 'ead,
that's what 't is, or she's going to sell it, to a gentleman from
London--Lord knows what a gentleman from London wants wi' 'en