his late benefactress. 'Let us speak for ourselves, sir.
She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with
me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself,
she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a
woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!'

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the
church door, and took it back to the grave in the corner, and laid it
down there, and wept alone. 'Not a very poor grave,' said the Reverend
Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, 'when it has that
homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of
the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!'

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The
water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a
softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a
little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could
add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith's letter and
had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the
groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave
for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of
the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard,
and how the last requests had been religiously observed.

'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie.
'I should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power,
without our managing partner.'

'Surely not the Jew who received us?' said Mrs Milvey.

('My dear,' observed her husband in parenthesis, 'why not?')

'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his
wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew. But
I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.'

'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling
in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife.

'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.

'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me what
my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They
asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I promised to be so.
They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are
employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed