es the potatoes clean with her apron, replacing them carefully
at the back of the cart.

Mrs. Grebby takes the reins, while Mr. Grebby follows on foot, driving
a few specially honoured sheep, who frequently serve him for
conversation throughout an entire evening spent smoking with
neighbouring farmers.

Eleanor watches them out of sight, her hand over her brow to shade the
dazzling sunlight from her eyes. A group of chickens congregate around
her with mute inquiry in their beaky faces. She fetches a handful of
grain from the barn, flings it into their midst, and returns singing to
her pewter polishing:

"And this the burden of his song
For ever used to be:

"How dull this soup tureen is, to be sure!" pausing in her verse to rub
it with extra vigour:

"I care for nobody, no not I,
If no one cares for me!"

The delinquencies of the dimmed soup tureen are forgotten as these last
words ring out in the quiet parlour. "Surely," thinks Eleanor, "there
is hidden pathos in the Jolly Miller of Dee's reckless assertion! To
care for nobody! What a horrible thought--a whole life's tragedy lies
in the closing verse. If no one cares for me!"

Eleanor sighs and leans her chin on her hands, kneeling before the
wooden table on which the dinner service is spread. What if nobody
cared for her! How vast and miserable a wilderness this world would
be! Why, even the dumb animals love her.

The little goat she called Nelly, who fell ill the week before, and
gasped out its breath in her arms on a dry heap of hay, gave all the
love of its disputed soul to Eleanor. Of course, it had a soul; she
made up her mind long ago on this point. How can a creature with such
mysteriously human eyes as Nelly possessed be less human than the great
plodding, loose-mouthed ploughboy, who only gapes when he is spoken to,
and contains what Mr. Grebby is pleased to call, "only half a
intellec'!"

Eleanor glances at the old-fashioned clock in the corner, decorated by
grotesque pottery dogs and four-legged creatures with horns, and faces
resembling tigers or cats. She has been up since five, for besides
market day it is churning morning, and she and her mother have worked
for hours in the dairy.

"It is time," she says at last, washing her small hands under the
scullery tap, and then reaching for a hat hanging on the kitchen
dresser.

"I wish I had something pretty to wear," she sighs, glancing at her
reflection in a cracked g