And there's no harm done--the poor thing takes it as a kindness,
I'm sure. I suppose _her_ life's dull enough. We're a pair." He felt
her shoulders heaving a little, as if she were gulping down something.
At last she said, "You ain't troublesome. I ought to ha' yerd ye come
in."

He released her suddenly. Her words broke the spell. The vulgar
accent gave him a shudder.

"Don't you _hear_ a bell ringing?" he said, with dual significance.

"Nosir," said Mary Ann ingenuously. "I'd yer it in a moment if there
was. I yer it in my dreams, I'm so used to it. One night I dreamt the
missus was boxin' my yers and askin' me if I was deaf and I said to
'er----"

"Can't you say 'her'?" cried Lancelot, cutting her short impatiently.

"Her," said Mary Ann.

"Then why do you say ''er'?"

"Missus told me to. She said my own way was all wrong."

"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot. "It's missus that has corrupted you, is
it? And pray what used you to say?"

"She," said Mary Ann.

Lancelot was taken aback. "She!" he repeated.

"Yessir," said Mary Ann, with a dawning suspicion that her own
vocabulary was going to be vindicated; "whenever I said 'she' she made
me say ''er,' and whenever I said 'her' she made me say 'she.' When I
said 'her and me' she made me say 'me and she,' and when I said 'I got
it from she,' she made me say 'I got it from 'er.'"

"Bravo! A very lucid exposition," said Lancelot, laughing. "Did she
set you right in any other particulars?"

"Eessir--I mean yessir," replied Mary Ann, the forbidden words flying
to her lips like prisoned skylarks suddenly set free. "I used to say,
'Gie I thek there broom, oo't?' 'Arten thee goin' to?' 'Her did say
to I.' 'I be goin' on to bed.' 'Look at----'"

"Enough! Enough! What a memory you've got! Now I understand. You're
a country girl."

"Eessir," said Mary Ann, her face lighting up. "I mean yessir."

"Well, that redeems you a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical
look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My
instinct was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out
something nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I hope
you went a-milking."

"Eessir, sometimes; and I drove back the milk-trunk in the cart, and I
rode down on a pony to the second pasture to count the sheep and the
heifers."

"Then you are a farmer's daughter?"

"Eessir. But my feyther--I mean my father--had only two little fie