black-pudding—“here’s something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea you must fetch it from in-doors.” 

 “Mr. Melbury is late this morning,” said the bottom-sawyer. 

 “Yes. ’Twas a dark dawn,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Even when I opened the door, so late as I was, you couldn’t have told poor men from gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don’t think maister’s slept at all well to-night. He’s anxious about his daughter; and I know what that is, for I’ve cried bucketfuls for my own.” 

 When the old woman had gone Creedle said, 

 “He’ll fret his gizzard green if he don’t soon hear from that maid of his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in ’em—’tis tempting Providence.” 

 “It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,” said young Timothy Tangs. 

 “I can mind her mother,” said the hollow-turner. “Always a teuny, delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind. She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship—ay, and a long apprenticeship ’twas. I served that master of mine six years and three hundred and fourteen days.” 

 The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years. 

 “Mr. Winterborne’s father walked with her at one time,” said old Timothy Tangs. “But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he’d take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he’ll make her as nesh as her mother was. But here he comes.” 

 Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite gone. 

 “I’d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn’t come or write than I get a letter from her—‘Clifton: Wednesday. My dear father,’ says she, ‘I’m coming home to-morrow’ (that’s to-day), ‘but I didn’t think it worth while to write long beforehand.’ The little rascal, 

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