od silently on the doorstep for a
moment; then Agnetta spoke again:

"I s'pose you're glad you're coming to live at the farm, ain't ye?"

"No," answered Lilac, "I don't know as I be. I'd rather bide here."

Agnetta had recovered her courage with her voice. She stepped uninvited
past Lilac into the room and cast a curious look round.

"Lor'!" she said, "don't it look mournful! I should think you'd be glad
to get away."

Lilac did not answer.

"What's this?" asked Agnetta, pouncing on the needlework which the two
women had left on the table.

"It's a frock for me," said Lilac. "Mrs Leigh give it to me."

Agnetta held the skirt out at arm's length and looked at it critically.

"Well!" she exclaimed with some scorn in her voice, "I should a thought
you'd a had it made different now."

"Different?" said Lilac enquiringly.

"Why, there's no reason you shouldn't have it cut more stylish, is
there, now there's no one to mind?"

No one to mind! Lilac looked at her cousin with dazed eyes for a
moment, as if she hardly understood--then she took the stuff out of her
hand.

"I'll never have 'em made different," she cried with a sudden flash in
her eyes; "I never, never will." And then to Agnetta's great surprise
she suddenly burst into tears.

Agnetta stood staring at her, puzzled. She was sorry, only what had
made Lilac cry just now when she had been quite calm hitherto?

"Don't take on so," she ventured to say presently; "and you'll spoil
your black. It'll stain dreadful."

But Lilac took no more notice than if she had not been there, and soon,
feeling that she could do nothing, Agnetta left her and took her way
home. She had accomplished something by her visit, though she did not
know it, for she had made Lilac feel now that it really was true.
Mother would not come back. She was alone in the world. There was no
one, as Agnetta had said, "to mind."

She began to understand it now, and the clearer it was the harder it was
to bear. So she bowed her head on the table, amongst the black stuff in
spite of Agnetta's caution, and cried on. And presently another thing,
which she had not realised till now, stood out plainly before her. She
was to go away to-morrow and live at Orchards Farm. Orchards Farm,
which she had always fancied the most beautiful place in the world, and
beside which her own home had seemed poor and small! Now all that had
changed, and the more she thought of it the more she felt