It comes
sideways up to the farm-yard; so that the whole thing must have
been different once, and there must have been a great court-yard.
In Elizabeth's time Plaistow Manor was rather a swell place, and
belonged to some Roman Catholics who came to grief, and then the
Howards got it. There's a whole history about it, only I don't much
care about those things."

"And is it yours now?"

"It's between me and my uncle, and I pay him rent for his part. He's
a clergyman you know, and he has a living in Lincolnshire,--not far
off."

"And do you live alone in that big house?"

"There's my sister. You've heard of Mary;--haven't you?"

Then Clara remembered that there was a Miss Belton,--a poor sickly
creature, with a twisted spine and a hump back, as to whose welfare
she ought to have made inquiries.

"Oh, yes; of course," said Clara. "I hope she's better than she used
to be,--when we heard of her."

"She'll never be better. But then she does not become much worse.
I think she does grow a little weaker. She's older than I am, you
know,--two years older; but you would think she was quite an old
woman to look at her." Then, for the next half-hour, they talked
about Mary Belton as they visited every corner of the place. Belton
still had an eye to business as he went on talking, and Clara
remarked how many sticks he moved as he went, how many stones he
kicked on one side, and how invariably he noted any defect in the
fences. But still he talked of his sister, swearing that she was as
good as gold, and at last wiping away the tears from his eyes as he
described her maladies. "And yet I believe she is better off than any
of us," he said, "because she is so good." Clara began to wish that
she had called him Will from the beginning, because she liked him
so much. He was just the man to have for a cousin,--a true loving
cousin, stalwart, self-confident, with a grain or two of tyranny in
his composition as becomes a man in relation to his intimate female
relatives; and one, moreover, with whom she could trust herself to
be familiar without any danger of love-making! She saw his character
clearly, and told herself that she understood it perfectly. He was a
jewel of a cousin, and she must begin to call him Will as speedily as
possible.

At last they came round in their walk to the gate leading into
Colonel Askerton's garden; and here in the garden, close to the gate,
they found Mrs. Askerton. I fancy that she had been watching f