lish;" I felt my color rising as I answered.

"Well, you speak sort o' queer, but my old man was English, too, a
Norfolk man, and blest if I could understand quarter he said for ever so
long after we got keeping company. I used to say yes to everything I
didn't understand when we was alone, for fear he might be popping the
question; but laws, I knew well enough when he did ask."

She fell into an apparently pleasant reverie, but soon returned to the
actualities of life.

"You're not married, surely."

I answered in the negative with fewest possible words.

"Got a young man, though, I'll warrant; such a likely girl."

"I do not understand what you mean," I answered with considerable
dignity, glad to let her know that her own English was not perfect.

"You must have been riz in a queer place not to know what likely is. Why,
it's good-looking; and anybody knows you're that. But I suppose you
didn't have much eddication, they mostly don't in England; my man didn't
know even his letters; but I have pretty good book larnin' and so we got
on all right," she continued, with a retrospective look on her not
unkindly face.

"Who might your folks be in Cavendish?" she asked, after a few moments of
welcome silence.

"I have no relatives there," I answered, I am afraid, rather
ungraciously.

"Going as governess or nurse girl to some of the aristocracy there? You
don't look as if you ever did much housework, though."

"I am going to Mr. Winthrop's."

"Deu tell! Why, I lived with his mother myself, when I was a widder
first."

Then she relapsed into another eloquent pause of silence, while possibly
in her dim way she was reflecting how history repeats itself. But coming
back to reality again, and scanning me more closely than ever, she asked,
"Are you going there to work?"

My patience was getting exhausted, and it is possible there was a trace
of petulance in my voice as I said, "No, I am Mr. Winthrop's ward."

"Deu tell! What is that?"

"He is my guardian."

"Why, he is a young man for that. I thought they got elderly men."

"My father held the same relation to him."

She was some time taking in the idea, but she said at last, "Oh, I see."

I took a book from my satchel and began reading; but she did not long
permit me to enjoy it; her next remark, however, riveted my attention.

"I wonder if your name isn't Selwyn."

"Yes."

"Deary me, then I have seen your pa and ma long ago at Oaklands; that's
the Win