me tuneful, Holcroft said,
"You've done well, Jane. Thank you. Now you can go back to the house."

The child soon returned in breathless haste to the field where the
farmer was covering the potato pieces she had dropped, and cried, "Mrs.
Wiggins's gone!"

Like a flash the woman's motive in asking for her wages occurred to
him, but he started for the house to assure himself of the truth.
"Perhaps she's in the cellar," he said, remembering the cider barrel,
"or else she's out for a walk."

"No, she aint," persisted Jane. "I've looked everywhere and all over
the barn, and she aint nowhere. Mother haint seen her, nuther."

With dreary misgivings, Holcroft remembered that he no longer had a
practical ally in the old Englishwoman, and he felt that a new breaking
up was coming. He looked wistfully at Jane, and thought, "I COULD get
along with that child if the other was away. But that can't be; SHE'D
visit here indefinitely if Jane stayed."

When Mrs. Mumpson learned from Jane of Mrs. Wiggins' disappearance, she
was thrown into a state of strong excitement. She felt that her hour
and opportunity might be near also, and she began to rock very fast.
"What else could he expect of such a female?" she soliloquized. "I've
no doubt but she's taken things, too. He'll now learn my value and
what it is to have a caretaker who will never desert him."

Spirits and courage rose with the emergency; her thoughts hurried her
along like a dry leaf caught in a March gale. "Yes," she murmured, "the
time has come for me to act, to dare, to show him in his desperate need
and hour of desertion what might be, may be, must be. He will now see
clearly the difference between these peculiar females who come and go,
and a respecterble woman and a mother who can be depended upon--one who
will never steal away like a thief in the night."

She saw Holcroft approaching the house with Jane; she heard him ascend
to Mrs. Wiggins' room, then return to the kitchen and ejaculate, "Yes,
she's gone, sure enough."

"Now, ACT!" murmured the widow, and she rushed toward the farmer with
clasped hands, and cried with emotion, "Yes, she's gone; but I'm not
gone. You are not deserted. Jane will minister to you; I will be the
caretaker, and our home will be all the happier because that monstrous
creature is absent. Dear Mr. Holcroft, don't be so blind to your own
interests and happiness, don't remain undeveloped! Everything is wrong
here if you would but