mistress until the gate shut her from admiring gaze.

“’Deed, then, she is—an’ as good as she’s purty,” assented Peggy.

“It’s Mr. Richard’s own child, she is,” went on Betty, reminiscently—“th’ same dancin’ e’en, an’ gladsome look, an’ merry smile; and yet, sometimes, when she’s thoughtful-like, an’ dreamy, you’d think she wer’ her own mother, as I could fancy her as a lass,”—and Betty heaved a very deep sigh, from a very capacious bosom.

And, indeed, Dorothy was a picture to gladden the eyes of man. The small coal-scuttle bonnet of Leghorn straw, with its drab strings, could not hide the pure oval of the face, nor its shade conceal its rich, warm complexion. The auburn ringlets, not corkscrewed to mechanic stiffness, but loosely curling, fell in clusters about her shoulders; and the child moved with an instinctive grace. Once out of the view of the garden and the house windows her pace quickened, she began to skip along joyously, her bonnet thrown back from the head, and her little feet, peeping and twinkling from beneath her shortened skirts, beat measure to the snatches of songs, that were not hymnal in their wording or their melody. As she passed the cottage doors, the good folk—standing by their thresholds to breath the air, or bask in the grateful sun, or while away the sleepy hours of unwonted rest in friendly gossip with “my nabs”—would turn to look upon the sweet and glad young face, and not one but had a hearty word and a friendly greeting for Miss Dorothy.

“Eh! But oo’s a bonny wench. A seet ov her ’s fair gooid for sore e’en. Oo’ll be a bright spot i’ some lucky chap’s whom some fine day, please the pigs.” And Dorothy had a nod, and a smile, too, for everyone; for she knew them all by name, and most of them worked for her uncle, either in the mill, or at their own loom in the long upper chamber of their little cottages.

“Oo’s bahn to see poor Lucy Garsed, Ben’s lass, aw’ll be bun; an’ oo’s noan empty-handed noather. See th’ posy oo’s getten; an’ mi mouth fair watters when aw think o’ what there’ll be i’th basket—noan o’ th’ missus’ sendin’, aw’ll go bail.”

“Aye, there’ll be summat beside tracks, if Miss Dorothy’s had a finger i’ th’ pie,”—and so the old wives’ tongues ran on.

The cottage of Ben Garside was barely furnished, but all was spick and span. Ben was a hand-loom weaver, and, of a week-day, by earliest day, til sunset in the spring and summer-tide, you could have heard the clack of his loom overhead as 

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