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but they had multiplied so, that I was obligated to make 'em immigrate to the barn. Well, this chamber was made all white and tidy and purty, and she was put there. Arterwards we al'ays called it the Dove's Nest. The dame, too, thoft our fare was too coose for her, and wanted to coodle her with her kickshaws, and pomps, and vanities, as I call 'em. But she took to the brown bread and the milk quite hearty, and the roast beef, and sometimes even a bit of straiky bacon and greens. But milk was her particular fancy. Lor'-a-massy, how she wud drink the milk and cream! She al'ays had her mouth in the milkpan a'most, and I used to say she was like the caalves, and had al'ays a white spot of milk on her nose. So she growed quite blooming and hearty, and so frolicsome. She was al'ays coosing about the house or garden. The dame said she would com shooting in like the sunshine, dance around one, and then shoot out again. You could hear her, too, all over the place, singing like a bird, and larfing; Lor'-a-massy, what a larf it was!-the purtiest moosic I ever heard."

The curate muttered beneath his breath

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us.

So we felt cruel grieved when George comed to take her away; and when she was gone, the place seemed duller and darker, and I Isaid to the dame that I thoft the autumn weather had shut in very early.

"We never saw them again. Soon arter Georgey got a fine place in Ingy, and took the little woman out with un. We had one letter from 'em there, but 'twere wrote so close, and so cut and smoked, that we cudn't make much ov it. There was a box too comed from Lunnun, with a drinking-cup made out of buffalo's horn for me, and some cheny and knick-knacks for the

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dame, and bow and arrows for Tom. And now com my bit of romance. One market-day the Boots comes up and says that a gentleman wonts to speak to me in the inn. I goes; and there wos a stiff, prim man in rusty black, and there wos a little maid a-lying half asleep on the sofy. 'Mr Penrice, I believe,' says he. 'Yeoman Penrice,' says I, 'at your service.' 'The same, I suppose,' he saith. 'I have to deliver to you a charge and a letter from your late friend George Carthew.' 'My late friend; why, sure, George ben't dead?' The grim man nodded. 'And his little wife?' 'Dead too,' he says. I never had such a turn in my life; my heart went quite cold, and my limbs went all of a tremble. I was never good at crying, but I cud have cried right out like a woman then, except for the grim man. Perhaps, Mr Penrice,' says he, 'you had better read this letter.' 'Twas from George, very short, but I knows it by heart. It went thus

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"DEAR OLD GUY,-I am dying, and the dear little woman is gone before me. We leave one little orphan girl, without a friend in the world. Will you give her a shelter and bread? I know old Guy will do this for the sake of old times, and this quiets my last hours. God bless you, dear old boy.-Yours,

'GEORGE CARTHEW.'

And then there was a P.S. — 'I send with the child the only thing I have of any value.'

"Is this the little maid then?' says I, going up to her, and taking her on my lap; and will she com and live with the old faarmer?' She put her little arms round my neck, and looked up, just like her mother. 'Do you accept the trust then?' says the grim man. In coose I do,' says I. 'Where should George's orfling find a home 'cept under my roof-tree?' 'And you agree to keep her until claimed by her friends?' 'Yes,' says I; and I hope 'twill be long enough afore

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that time com.' 'It is my duty, then, to give you this also,' he says, giving me a box, with something in it, tho' I didn't take much note of it, and p'rhaps you will sign this paper.' I thoft it oncommon queer to sign for the little maid, as tho' she'd been a head of cattle or a pack of wool, but I did-and I was oncommon glad when the grim man refused to go back to Tregarrow. So when the little maid had took somewhat to eat, I orders a po-shay, puts in her little chist, and away we drove. Lor'-a-massy, how the people did stare to see me in a poshay! They thoft I was canvassing the country; and the dame, too, she rins out in a flurry as we drove up to the door, and looked quite startled and 'mazed like, when I said, 'Here, dame-here's a foundling and orfling for tonus.' But when she knowed the rights, she took the little maid in her arms, and hugged and kissed her. So she wos put at once into the Dove's Nest, and from that time we took her to our home, and she was to us as a daughter. And that's how I com by my legacy." "It must have been a great charge," remarked the curate, "to bring up a young lady like that?"

"Oh, no! my dame can rear any thing, from a kitten or a calf to a chield. She brings up everything hearty and keenly. Everything thrives under the dame."

"But you must have found some difficulty about education in this remote part of the world?"

"Edication! oh, there be some things which edicate theirselves, and she wos one. Lily wos al'ays out in the fields and the woods, and in the sunshine among the flowers, and with the birds, and the beasts, and the bees; and I'm sure that she larnt more thus than from all the old books, especially the old Latten. Then the missus was a bewtiful needlewoman, and taught her to hem and sew, to spin, and to make cream and cheeses, and seed-cakes, to cure hams and pickle onions, and presarve plums, and suchlike."

The yeoman poured forth this

programme of instruction, ore rotundo, as though he felt rather proud of it. The curate, however, heaved a sigh, which might have done duty as a groan, at hearing this rôle of accomplishments for a young lady.

"Then," continued he, "the pordigal taught her to be a beautiful hosswoman, and bought a filly for her. Lor'-a-massy! how I stared when I looked in my banker's book and saw the price of that filly. 'Twould have bought I don't know how many steers.'

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But, p'rhaps," hinted the curate, "the young lady's friends, if they reclaimed her, might expect to find her versed in the more modern accomplishments."

"Then they should have looked out for that theirselves; but I don't think they would have much right to complain even about all that fal-lal larning, for Lily used to go with Miss Emily to the squire's governess for all that, only I forbid the Latten. No, thank God, I wudn't hear of that. There was a lady too come to the Hall, a sister of the squire's, and she brought her little daughter with her the little maid was in a very bad way— a-dying of consumption-and they did everything to indulge her. So she took a fancy to Lily, and wud have her there for hours, sometimes days with her; and the mother, for a return like, taught her parleyvous-ing and 'talianosing, not with my knowledge, tho' no bad have com ov it, nor no good either that I knows ov."

"Oh," said the curate, "it must be a great advantage to have acquired the languages under such circumstances.'

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"Well, I don't know about advantages; she can never find anybody to speak 'em here. To be sure, she had once a chance with her Italiane; a poor little 'Talian boy com to the faarm one day all footsore and worn out wi' hunger and travel. Lily went up and spoke to'm, and at the sound of his own tongue his eye brightened, and he jumped up for joy. It seemed

to hearten'm more than the beef and beer. He stayed three days to talk with Lily, and then the tramp fit took 'm again.

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However, the lady too was a beautiful moosician, and she taught Lily to sing and play oncommon fine. Then the little maid died away one spring, and she had ordered all her things-her boxes, her paint-tools, her guytar, and her grand piany-to be sent to Lily. Lor-a-massy! When that grand piany com, what a quandary it put me in! I cudn't put un in the hall, for that wudn't be fitty, and 'twos too big for the dame's bowdyoire, so we wos obligated to clear out the great parlor and put it to rights, and the women used to slock me in ov nights to hear Lily sing. "So you see my legacy han't been neglected or brought up quite like a faarmer's wench, and she've paid us back, she've paid us back, she have. "Twos jest the mother over again, dancing and singing about the house. She wud put a new spirit into our life, and give us a new nature, like, at times. Then she brought some books from the Hall about old English characters, and the verses of a fine old passon, and some old ballads, which she wud read by the hour in the nights, and draw me away from thinking too much of the crops and the cattle and the price of wool. I don't know what wud have com of me but for Lily, 'specially arter the pordigal went away; I shud have took to saving, or to drinking, or growed melancholy, perhaps.

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"It used to be so cozy thus after work hours, and then her singing of the evening hymn is the finest prayer I ever heard, and sends one to bed so calm and comfortable like.

"Yes, she've been a very blessed legacy to me."

"But you said something," remarked the curate, pausing some time after the yeoman's narrative, "about a box which came with the legacy."

"Oh, yes, 'twas the queerest

thing you ever seed, a bone cup with tinsel trade all round the rim."

"'Twas curious that such a thing should be sent so far-it must be more valuable than you think. I have been bred in cities, and among merchants, and have seen and heard somewhat of gems and precious stones. I should like to see this cup."

"Shalt see un-shalt see un anon. Here we be now at the barton."

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On

As he spoke they came in front of large gate which stood wide open, seemingly inviting all comers, and rendering rather superfluous the offices of the great bell which swung over it. There little needs a summons where the doors are open, and the boards plenteous. Opposite stood the house. The space between was a quadrangle-a large paved court with a circle of green in the centre, and diamond-shaped plots of grass at the corners. one side rose a high wall, along which was raised a garden-terrace, planted with the old-fashioned sweet flowers-sweet-williams and gilliflower-and beds of old sweet herbs, marjoram, thyme — all for the especial delectation of the bees. These were their summer delights. Poor bees! Christmas seemed anything but a jovial time for them. Their homes looked very forlorn and dreary with the snow weighing down their thatch, and the icicles hanging from their eaves, chilling all ideas of pleasant hummings, and the sweetness of honey and the honeycomb.

"They'm profitless things, rather, the bees," said the yeoman, "but I like to hear and see 'em in the summer-time, and I love too the oldfashioned flowers and the yarbs, which they loves. The dame, too, likes her jars of honey and her bits of comb, and a glass of methegelin."

On the other side of the quadrangle was a broad walk, bordered by a low hedge of privet and thorn, which seemed intended rather as a boundary than a fence, and from it a succession of garden-slopes stretched down to the valley below.

At the end of this walk, near the entrance-gate, rose a grassy knoll, crowned by a clump of trees, which formed in themselves a natural arbour. An old yew-tree-a lusty old fellow, some centuries old, yet so vigorous and green and hale, that he seemed only yet in the prime of manhood-was the magnate of the group, and rather overlooked and overbore his vis-à-vis, a green baytree, which seemed, however, flourishing enough to offer an illustration of the most prosperous sinner; between, a tall poplar rose like a banner-staff. Beside the knoll a fine horse-chestnut threw his branches far and wide, stretching them partly over the wall out into the world, and partly in kindly tender towards the neighbour clump. Below, on a plateau which seemed to have been formed as a pedestal for it, stood a glorious old pink hawthorn. The snow-flakes lay on it now like icy buds, and ever and anon a gust of wind would scatter them in a sleety storm, a cruel mockery of the shower of sweet buds with which the sweet south would sprinkle the grass in the beauteous summer-time.

In the midst of the clump a summer-house had been erected not such an atrocity as these things generally are, but still a standing insult to the natural screen behind. This was a favourite spot with old Penrice; from hence he could command the prospect of his goodly domain of the open fields, stretching from a broad belt of upland down to the meadows, through which gurgled and rippled a tiny brook, struggling now with an invading border of ice-of the large pond into which it flowed, sheeted now with ice, though the glint of a starbeam here and there marked breaks and fissures in the cold surface of the substantial home, with its cold outside and its reeking chimneys of the great masses of outbuildings, barns, and stacks, which, with their white tops and their irregular shapes, and in the shadowyness of distance, looked like a field of icebergs-of the broad

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he had protested against, and set aside, and argued down time after time, without actually overcoming it. "No, no," remonstrated the yeoman; "'tis not exactly like that no, not so bad as that neither: I al'ays gives of my abundance. If I don't squander, I don't hoard; and nobody ever goeth from my doors a-hungered or athirst."

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"Yes, very likely," replied the curate; but there is, my friendbut there is a pride of giving as well as of saving, and both belong to the pride of prosperity."

""Tis true enough. I daresay all you say is gospel; and I don't doubt that the trial of that pordigal was sent as a judgment for my fatness of heart and God knows it have done much; for what pleasure can it be to look out on all these possessions, and feel perhaps that I may have no child to inherit it? But come along; let us go and see the dame."

"A good, solid, substantial old place, ben't it?" said Penrice, as they stood in front of the house.

'Twas in reality a substantial place. It had evidently, in former times, been part of a small manorhouse, and had then become the residence for the barton. The front was of plain grey stone, and at each angle was a square turret. The windows were large and mullioned with stone mouldings. The top had been battlemented once, but the

heavy thatched roof had either obscured or destroyed all trace of this. That thatch was certainly an incongruity: an attempt had been made to train ivy along the walls, but the stone was too cold and hard even for it to gain a holding, and it hung down in hungrylooking branches, beaten and dejected. On the side of one turret some roses and clematis had been trained, by means of a trellis-work, to cluster around the windows of the chamber. This was the Dove's Nest.

""Tis a brave substantial old place," reiterated the yeoman.

"Yes," assented the curate; "it certainly is, and, spite of its plainness, is somewhat picturesque too; but I must say that I think the thatch incongruous.”

"I knowed you would say so; that's what they all say-the passon, the squire, Tom, and all; incongruous-incongruous. 'Twas al'ays the same cry with 'em. But the thatch was put there by my grandfa'r, and repaired by my fayther, and it shall stand there for all my day."

"Thou fool! how knowest thou what a day may bring forth?" was on the curate's tongue for utterance, but he would not venture on another text that night; and he saw, besides, that this prejudice of the thatch, from long assertion and contradiction, had grown to the strength of a principle.

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