, and she has had a lucky escape."

"Say ye? If so, then there is no call for her to carry on," said Keziah
philosophically. "But the poor bairn's looking wantle enough now, though
I warrant me the fell-side air will brisk her up in no time."

"I hope it will," said her brother.

"What does she eat, now? You see, now I've got the lass on my hands, I
cannot hunger her," said Keziah. "Not that I can give her dainties and
messes," she added hastily, the miser's cloak suddenly covering the
woman's heart. "She'll have to take what we get, and be thankful for her
meat. Still, it's as well to know what a body's been accustomed to when
they come like this, all of a heap."

"Don't fash yourself about her," answered Emmanuel. "Do what you
can--that you will, I know--but leave her to herself: that's the way for
her. She's an odd little body, and the least said the soonest mended
with Leam."

"With who, d'ye say?" asked Keziah sharply.

"Lean--Leonora," said Emmanuel cherubically.

"Well, I wouldn't call a daughter of mine after old Pharaoh's kine,"
snapped Keziah with supreme scorn; and at that moment Leam came into the
room, and Keziah bustled out of it to tig after Jenny and ding at Tim,
as these two faithful servitors were wont to express the way of their
mistress toward them.

"My dear, I did not know that things were so miserable here for you, but
you must just bide here till the scent grows cold, and then I'll come
for you and put you where you'll be better off," said Mr. Gryce kindly
when he was alone with Leam.

"This will do," said Leam, suppressing a shudder as she looked round
the little room, where what had originally been a rhubarb-colored
paper--chosen because it was a good wearing color--was patched here and
there with scraps of newspapers or bits of other patterned papers; where
the huge family Bible and a few musty and torn odd volumes of the
_Spectator_ and the _Tatler_ comprised the sole library; and where the
only ornaments on the chimneypiece were three or four bits of lead ore
from the Roughton Gill mines, above Caldbeck.

"You have been used to something far different," said Emmanuel,
compassionately.

"My past is over," she answered in a low voice.

"But you'll come to a better future," he cried, his mild blue eyes
watery and red.

"Shall I? When I die?" was her reply as she passed her hand wearily over
her forehead, and wished--ah, how ardently!--that the question might
answer itself now a