rneath, and felt half distracted as she spoke. Mrs. Peckover,
delighted to be of some use, forgot her company manners in an instant,
pulled out her red cotton pocket-handkerchief and darted at the spilt
sherry. But the rector was even quicker with his napkin. Mrs. Peckover's
cheeks turned the color of her handkerchief as she put it back in her
pocket, and sat down again.

"Much obliged--no harm done--much obliged, ma'am," said Doctor Joyce.
"Now, Valentine, if you don't leave off apologizing, and sit down
directly in that arm-chair against the wall, I shall take Mrs. Peckover
into my study, and hear everything she has to say, at a private
interview. There! we are all comfortable and composed again at last, and
ready to be told how little Mary and the good friend who has been like a
mother to her first met."

Thus appealed to, Mrs. Peckover began her narrative; sometimes
addressing it to the Doctor, sometimes to Mrs. Joyce, and sometimes
to Valentine. From beginning to end, she was only interrupted at rare
intervals by a word of encouragement, or sympathy, or surprise, from her
audience. Even Mr. Blyth sat most uncharacteristically still and silent;
his expression alone showing the varying influences of the story on him,
from its strange commencement to its melancholy close.

"It's better than ten years ago, sir," began the clown's wife, speaking
first to Doctor Joyce, "since my little Tommy was born; he being now,
if you please, at school and costing nothing, through a presentation, as
they call it I think, which was given us by a kind patron to my husband.
Some time after I had got well over my confinement, I was out one
afternoon taking a walk with baby and Jemmy; which last is my husband,
ma'am. We were at Bangbury, then, just putting up the circus: it was a
fine large neighborhood, and we hoped to do good business there. Jemmy
and me and the baby went out into the fields, and enjoyed ourselves very
much; it being such nice warm spring weather, though it was March at the
time. We came back to Bangbury by the road; and just as we got near the
town, we see a young woman sitting on the bank, and holding her baby in
her arms, just as I had got my baby in mine.

"'How dreadful ill and weak she do look, don't she?' says Emmy. Before
I could say as much as 'Yes,' she stares up at us, and asks in a wild
voice, though it wasn't very loud either, if we can tell her the way to
Bangbury workhouse. Having pretty sharp eyes o