, too, though I was, to say so, put over him. But he knew
my respect for him, black silk afternoons or no black silk, and how we
all leaned on him, really.

And then Margaret came, as I said, and it was all to tell, and a fine
mess I made of it and William Hodges that settled it, after all.

For Margaret wanted to pack her box directly and get off, and said
she'd never heard of such doings and had no liking for people that
weren't right.

"Not right?" says Hodges, "not right? Don't you make any such mistake,
my girl. Madam attends to all her law business and is at church
regularly, and if she's not for much company--why, all the easier for
us. Her cheques are as sensible as any one's, I don't care who the man
is, and a lady has a right to her fancies. I've lived with very high
families at home, and if I'm suited, you may depend upon it the place
is a good one. Go or stop, as you like, but don't set up above your
elders, young woman."

So she thought it over and the end of it all was that she was with us
till the last. And gave me many a black hour, too, poor child, meaning
no harm, but she admired Hodges, it was plain, and being younger than I
and far handsomer in a dark, Scotch way, it went hard with me, for he
made no sign, and I was proud and wouldn't have showed my feelings for
my life twice over.

Well, it went on three years more. I made my little frocks longer and
the gold fish grew bigger and we set out new marigolds every year, that
was all. It was like some quiet dream, when I've gone back and seemed
a girl again in the green lanes at home, with mother clear-starching
and the rector's daughter hearing my catechism and Master Lawrence sent
off to school for bringing me his first partridge. Those dreams seem
long and short at one and the same time, and I wake years older, and
yet it has not been years that passed but only minutes. So it was at
Childerstone. The years went by like the hours went in the children's
garden, all hedged in, like, and quiet and leaving no mark. We all
seemed the same to each other and one day was like another, full,
somehow, and busy and happy, too, in a quiet, gentle way.

When old Katey lay dying she spoke of these days for the first time to
me. She'd sent up the porringers and set out glasses of milk and made
cookies in heart shapes with her mouth tight shut for all that time,
and we never knowing if she sensed it rightly or not. But on her
deathbed she told me