now—oh! so pale and thin, and has to lie all day on the settle.”

“You mean the sofa, child.”

“No, aunt, the kitchen settle I mean, they have no sofa; but they try to make it comfortable for her with shawls and things; and her mother is making a list hearth-rug for her to lie on, and then, may-be, she’ll be easier—and she loves flowers. You will let me take them, aunt Martha, won’t you?”

“Well, they’re gathered now, and it’s no use wasting them. But, in future, you must ask my leave before you cut more. And I don’t quite know how your uncle would like you going trashing about among those low mill-girls.”

“But, aunt”—and here Dorothy lowered her voice and glanced timorously at the opened window of the parlour—“but, aunt Martha, they say—in the village, I mean, not Lucy’s mother—that Lucy’s hurt her spine and crooked her legs working too long in the mill—hours and hours, and hours, they say, all the day and nearly all the night, and sleeping under the machines because she was too tired to go home to bed; and that, and not enough to eat, the doctor says, has made poor Lucy a cripple for life.”

“Then Dr. Wimpenny ought to be whipped for saying such things, and I won’t have you listening to these tittle-tattling stories. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to let folks tell you lies about your uncle’s mill. Folk ought to be glad they can send their children to work, to earn their own living. How would they live if they couldn’t? But there’s no gratitude left in the world—that’s a fact. But there’s your uncle finished his nap, and you’d best be off; and don’t let me hear any more of your silly tales about things you don’t understand.”

It was a very prim and demure maiden that walked sedately from the side-gate of the house at Wilberlee, a large bunch or posy of flowers grasped in one little hand, a basket in the other. Dorothy had coaxed sundry delicacies from the not reluctant Betty—a loaf of bread, some slices of meat, a pot of jam, a glass of calves’-foot jelly, and a small packet of tea.

“Bless her bonny face,” remarked Betty to Peggy, the underling, “it isn’t i’ my heart to refuse her owt. But it’s to be hoped th’ missus ’ll never find it out.”

“Saints preserve us,” devoutly ejaculated Peggy, who was shrewdly suspected to have Milesian blood in her veins.

“Isn’t she a pictur’?” said Betty, as her eyes followed her little 

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