ten years old. Setting down the tray in her
hand, she first speedily delivered the captive pussy, and then proceeded
deftly to disentangle the wool, rolling it up again in a ball.

"Prithee, weep not, Mother, dear heart!" she said cheerily. "Granny
sleeps, and needs no tending at this present. I've set pussy free, I
shall soon have the yarn right again. You're over-wrought, poor
Mother!"

Her child's sympathetic words seemed to have the effect of making Collet
cry the harder; but Tabitha's voice responded for her.

"Well said, Beatrice, and well done! I love to see a maid whose fingers
are not all thumbs. But, dear me, Collet, what a shiftless woman are
you! Can't you pack those lads out o' door, and have a quiet house for
your work? I should, for sure!"

"You'd find you'd got your work cut out, Mistress Hall, I can tell you.
`Pack 'em out o' door' means just send 'em to prey on your neighbours,
and have half-a-dozen angry folks at you afore night, and a sight o'
damage for to pay."

"Set them to weed your garden, can't you? and tie up that trailing
honeysuckle o'er the porch, that's a shame to be seen. Make 'em
useful--that's what I say."

"And 'tis what I'd be main thankful to do if I could--that I'll warrant
you, Mistress Hall; but without I stood o'er 'em every minute of the
time, the flowers 'd get plucked up and the weeds left, every one on
'em. That'd be useful, wouldn't it?"

"You've brought them up ill, Collet, or they'd be better lads than that.
I'd have had 'em as quat as mice, the whole six, afore I'd been their
mother a week."

"I cast no doubt, Mistress Hall," said Collet, driven to retort as she
rarely did, "if you'd had the world to make, it'd ha' been mortal grand,
and all turned out spic-span: look you, the old saw saith, `Bachelors'
wives be always well-learned,' and your lads be angels, that's sure,
seein' you haven't ne'er a one on 'em; but mine isn't so easy to manage
as yourn, looking as I've six to see to."

"You've lost your temper, Collet Pardue," said Mrs Tabitha, with calm
complacency; "and that's a thing a woman shouldn't do who calls herself
a Christian."

Before Collet could reply, a third person stood in the doorway. She
looked up, and saw her landlord, Mr Benden.

As it happened, that gentleman was not aware of the presence of his
sister-in-law, who was concealed from him by the open door behind which
she was sitting, as well as by a sheet which was hanging up to