pted to keep a large umbrella against
the wind.

"Nineteen--twenty--twenty-one," counted the toll-keeper's widow behind
me as I watched the spasmodic jerkings of this umbrella. "I wasn't far
out in my reckon. And you, sir, make twenty-two. It niver rains but it
pours, they say. Times enow I don't see a soul for days together, not
to hail by name, an' now you drops in on top of a Vaccination."

Her sigh over this plethora of good fortune was interrupted by a
knocking at the door, and the mothers trooped in, their clothes
dripping pools of water on the sanded lime-ash. One or two of them,
after exchanging greetings with their hostess, bade me Good-morning:
others eyed me in silence as they took their seats round the wall.
All whose babes were not sound asleep quietly undid their bodices and
began to give them suck. The older children scrambled into chairs and
sat kicking their heels and tracing patterns on the floor with the
water that ran off their umbrellas. They were restless but rather
silent, as if awed by the shadow of the coming Vaccination. The woman
who had brought up the procession, found a place in the far corner,
and began to unwind the comforter around her neck. Her eyes were
brighter and more agitated than any in the room.

"A brave trapse all the way from Upper Woon," remarked the youngest
mother, wiping a smear of rain from her baby's forehead.

"Ah, 'tis your first, Mary Polsue. Wait till you've carried twelve
such loads, my dear," said a tall middle-aged woman, whose black hair,
coarse as a mane, was powdered grey with, raindrops.

"Dear now, Ellen; be this the twelfth?" our hostess exclaimed. "I was
reckonin' it the 'leventh."

"Ay, th' twelfth--tho' I've most lost count. I buried one, you know."

"For my part," put in a pale-eyed blonde, who sat near the door, "'t
seems but yestiddy I was here with Alsia yonder." She nodded her head
towards a girl of five who was screwing herself round in her chair and
trying to peep out of the window.

"Ay, they come and come: the Lord knows wherefore," the tall woman
assented. "When they'm young they make your arms ache, an' when they
grow up they make your heart ache."

"But 'Melia Penaluna's been here more times than any of us," said the
blonde with a titter, directing her eyes towards a corner of the room.
The rest looked too, and laughed. Turning, I saw that the plain-faced
woman had unwound her comforter, and now I could see, hanging low on
her chest,