own gaudiness. Yes, father,
I may be smart now. There were moments in which I thought that I might
never wear more the pretty things which he had given me.' Then she rose
from her seat again, and hung on his neck, and wept and sobbed till he
feared that her heart-strings would break with joy.

So the morning passed away among them till about eleven o'clock, when
the servant brought in word that Mr. Holt and one or two other of the
tenants wanted to see the young master. The squire had been sitting
alone in the back room so that the husband and wife might be left
together; but he had heard voices with which he was familiar, and he now
came through to ask Hester whether the visitors should be sent away for
the present. But Hester would not have turned a dog from the door which
had been true to her husband through his troubles. 'Let them come,' she
said. 'They have been so good to me, John, through it all! They have
always known that baby was a true Caldigate.'

Holt and the other farmers were shown into the room, and Holt as a
matter of course became the spokesman. When Caldigate had shaken hands
with them all round, each muttering his word of welcome, then Holt
began: 'We wish you to know, squoire, that we, none of us, ain't been
comfortable in our minds here at Folking since that crawling villain
Crinkett came and showed himself at our young squire's christening.'

'That we ain't,' said Timothy Purvidge, another Netherden farmer.

'I haven't had much comfort since that day myself, Mr. Purvidge,' said
Caldigate,--'not till this morning.'

'Nor yet haven't none of us,' continued Mr. Holt, very impressively.
'We knowed as you had done all right. We was as sure as the church
tower. Lord love you, sir, when it was between our young missus,--who'll
excuse me for noticing these bright colours, and for saying how glad I
am to see her come out once again as our squire's wife should come
out,--between her and that bedangled woman as I seed in the court, it
didn't take no one long to know what was the truth!' The eloquence here
was no doubt better than the argument, as Caldigate must have felt when
he remembered how fond he had once been of that 'bedangled woman.'
Hester, who, though she knew the whole story, did not at this moment
join two and two together, thought that Mr. Holt put the case uncommonly
well. 'No! we knew,' he continued, with a wave of his hand. 'But the
jury weren't Netherden men,--nor yet Utterden, Mr. Halfa