r with my sharp tongue."

"But you will have to be a little careful of the sharp tongue when you
get to London," said John, smiling. He was struck by the half-sly,
half-acquiescent look that Sarah stole at him from beneath those long
eyelashes. Perhaps her outspokenness was not so involuntary as he had
imagined.

"If I had known you were coming to-day, I would have gone up to say
good-bye to Lady Mary last night," said Sarah, mournfully. "She won't
want me now you are here."

"I have a thousand and one things to look after. I sha'n't be in your
way," said John, good-naturedly, "if she is not busy otherwise."

"Busy!" echoed Sarah. "She sits _so_, with her hands in her lap,
looking over the valley. And she has grown, oh, so much thinner and
sadder-looking. I thought you would never come."

"I have my own work," said John, hurriedly, "and I thought, besides,
she would rather be alone these first few weeks."

Sarah looked up with a flash in her blue eyes, which were so dark, and
large-pupilled, and heavily lashed, that they looked almost black. She
ground her strong white teeth together.

"If I were Lady Mary," she said, "I would have slammed the old front
door behind me the very day after Sir Timothy was buried--and gone
away; I would. There she is, like a prisoner, with the old ladies
counting every tear she sheds, and adding them up to see if it is
enough; and measuring every inch of crape on her gowns; and finding
fault with all she does, just as they used when Sir Timothy was alive
to back them up. And she is afraid to do anything he didn't like; and
she never listens to the doctor, the only person in the world who's
ever had the courage to fight her battles."

"The doctor," said John, sharply. "Has she been ill?"

"No, no."

"What has _he_ to do with Lady Mary?" said John.

His displeasure was so great that the colour rose in his clean-shaven
face, and did not escape little Sarah's observation, for all her
downcast lashes.

"Somebody must go and see her," said Sarah; "and you were away. And
the canon is just nobody, always bothering her for subscriptions;
though he is very fond of her, like everybody else," she added, with
compunction. "Dear me, Mr. Crewys, how fast you are walking!"

John had unconsciously quickened his pace so much that she had some
ado to keep up with him without actually running.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"It is so hot, and the hill is steep, and I am rather fat. I dare s