ble for me.'

But the thanks were not so warm as Jack expected, and he could not
understand what made Bryda seem so different from the eager, restless
girl of the previous day, whose whole heart seemed then set on going to
Bristol.

The supper was silent, and old Mr Palmer could not be persuaded to taste
the little meat pie made expressly for him. He pushed the plate away,
saying,--

'What business have I to be eating dainties like that, when I may not
have a crust to gnaw before the year's out. Take it away, take it
away--I don't want it.'

Jack took leave as soon as supper was over, and made his way with a
heavy heart to his own home.

Then he found his mother in a very captious mood, upbraiding him for his
long absence, and asking what he had been about all day.

'That's my concern, I suppose, in my holidays,' he replied.

'I shall be glad when your holidays are over, vastly glad. Your brother
Jim is worth six of you after all. You don't know how to take advantage
of the place in uncle's shop, which many would give their ears for.'

'Let Jim go to be a silversmith,' Jack said, 'and I'll come on the
farm.'

'No. I know what's what, and the eldest shall have the first chance. For
the sake of your widowed mother and six innocent little sisters you
ought to be willing to do anything to raise you in the world.'

'Raise me! Pshaw! it's the other way,' Jack said. 'It's fine "raising,"
indeed, to be cooped up in a little workshop, peering into the works of
old watches, with a glass in my eye and my back ready to break. However,
I'm off again on Monday,' he said, altering his tone, for he remembered
that if Bryda was in Dowry Square, within reach, even the little
workshop and the pain in his back would be tolerable.

Mrs Henderson was seated by the wide lattice window, with her feet on a
stool, dressed much more smartly than the farmers' wives in the
neighbourhood. She was sprigging fine muslin for a cap, and she wore
large rings on the finger of her left hand, as well as her wedding ring
on the other.

The rings were of doubtful quality, like Falstaff's of old, but they
were family heirlooms, and had been worn by her mother before her.

Mrs Henderson prided herself on her ancestry, her mother being the
daughter of a draper and haberdasher in Bath. She was generally supposed
to be a cut above her neighbours, and she left the farm to the
serving-man she dignified with the name of bailiff, and her six little
gi