n't mean to take little Mary away, and I
won't ask you to say so much as another word! You'll leave her with Mr.
and Mrs. Blyth, won't you, sir? For your sister's sake, you'll leave her
with the poor bed-ridden lady that's been like a mother to her for so
many years past?--for your dear, lost sister's sake, that I was with
when she died--"

"Tell me about her." He said those few words with surprising gentleness,
as Mrs. Peckover thought, for such a rough-looking man.

"Yes, yes, all you want to know," she answered. "But I can't stop here.
There's my brother--I've got such a turn with seeing you, it's almost
put him out of my head--there's my brother, that I must go back to, and
see if he's asleep still. You just please to come along with me, and
wait in the parlor--it's close by--while I step upstairs--" (Here she
stopped in great confusion. It seemed like running some desperate risk
to, ask this strange, stern-featured relation of Mary Grice's into
her brother's house.) "And yet," thought Mrs. Peckover, "if I can only
soften his heart by telling him about his poor unfortunate sister, it
may make him all the readier to leave little Mary--"

At this point her perplexities were cut short by Matthew himself, who
said, shortly, that he had been to Dawson's Buildings already to look
after her. On hearing this, she hesitated no longer. It was too late to
question the propriety or impropriety of admitting him now.

"Come away, then," she said; "don't let's wait no longer. And don't
fret about the infamous state they've left things in here," she added,
thinking to propitiate him, as she saw his eyes turn once more at
parting, on the broken board and the brambles around the grave. "I know
where to go, and who to speak to--"

"Go nowhere, and speak to nobody," he broke in sternly, to her great
astonishment. "All what's got to be done to it, I mean to do myself."

"You!"

"Yes, me. It was little enough I ever did for her while she was alive;
and it's little enough now, only to make things look decent about the
place where she's buried. But I mean to do that much for her; and no
other man shall stir a finger to help me."

Roughly as it was spoken, this speech made Mrs. Peckover feel easier
about Madonna's prospects. The hard-featured man was, after all, not so
hard-hearted as she had thought him at first. She even ventured to
begin questioning him again, as they walked together towards Dawson's
Buildings.

He varied very