and glad as she entered her own home at Wilberlee. The ancient homestead of the Tinkers was hard by the mill. It was a long two-storied building of rude ashlar, now dark with age. There was a sitting room or company room, low and gloomy even on a bright day, for the windows were overhung by the ivy that covered the house front. The furniture was massive, dark mahogany. There were but few pictures or ornaments in the room, the pictures mostly oil-paintings of dead and gone Tinkers in stiff stocks, precise coats, with thick watch-chains and seals hanging from the fob; the women with smooth plaited hair, long stomachers, and severe looks. By the looking-glass over the mantel-piece were deep-edged mourning cards, in ornate frames, recording the deaths of defunct ancestors, with pious texts and verses expressive of a touching confidence in the departed’s eternal welfare.

The bedrooms of the upper story were furnished in the same enduring fashion, were even gloomier than the dismal sitting room, the vast four-posted mahogany bedsteads with their voluminous drapery casting heavy shadows, and as the narrow windows were never opened, the chamber air, in summer time, was heavy laden with the blended smell of feathers, flocks, and lavender. It is marvellous what a dread our forefathers, who lived so much in the open, had of fresh air and thorough ventilation in the sleeping rooms of their homes.

But, after all, the kitchen or living room was the main thing. A roaring fire in winter time, walls yellow-washed, floor ochred and sanded, dark rafters overhead, flitches, hams, ropes of onions, dried bushes of sage and parsley, burnished tins that caught and reflected rays of fire and gleam of sun, a long table, its top white as soap and scrubbing brush can make the close-grained sycamore, long shelves laden with Delf and ancient crockery—ah! It was a paradise for a good housewife.

And a good housewife Martha proved to be. There was not a cleaner house in all that country side. She had kept on Betty for Dorothy’s sake, and there was besides, Peggy, scullery maid and general help. Betty and Peggy would very much have preferred that their mistress had been neither so keen of eye nor sharp of tongue—for the Mistress who, as callers said, could not say boh to a goose, could talk thirteen to the dozen, so Betty averred, anent a grease spot or an iron-mould.

Martha’s lot, it may be said, if not an ideal, was now a serene one. Had she but had child of her own, she thought no happier woman could have been found in the wide West Riding. But in this Fate was unkind, and the 

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