s eyes as she
stopped speaking for a moment.

'Is it a hundred years ago since you were a little girl?' asked Miss
Mouse.

Nance smiled again.

'Not quite,' she replied, 'though none so far off it either. But long
ago as it is, I remember that first part of my life so well, so clear
and distinct it seems sometimes that I could fancy it much nearer than
things that happened a few years back only. I was an orphan, like my
poor Bob now, and I lived with my granny, same as Bob lives along wi'
me. 'My granny had come of----' here Nance hesitated, but went on
again--'after all there's no shame in it,' she said--'she'd come of
gipsy-folk, and when her husband died--he was a steady, settled sort of
man, a gardener at some big house, but he died young--she was that
lonely and lost-like, she went back to her own people with her little
son, and he married among them, so I'm three parts gipsy, you may say.
Both father and mother of mine died too--there's many that dies young
among our people, and some that lives on and on till you'd think death
had forgotten them, and that was the way with my granny. But she wasn't
so very old when the feel took her that she'd like to settle down again,
she'd got into the habit of a home of her own while her husband lived.
So one time when the vans were passing near by where had been her little
place, she takes a sudden thought that she'd like to see the fam'ly
again, and what did she do but she carried me in her arms and walked
some miles to the big house. The Squire was dead, but his lady was
living in the Dower House hard by, and the young Squire--none so young
by now--was at the hall with his wife and children. And they were
pleased to see her and kindly sorry for her troubles, and the Squire
said she should have a cottage if there was one to be had, if she'd
settle down near them. For my grandmother, for all her gipsying, was a
clever, useful woman, as good as a doctor for the cures and comforts she
could make with her knowledge of herbs and wild growing things, and
where she once gave her faithfulness she'd never draw it back again. So
it was fixed that she should make her home there again, though her own
folk were none best pleased to lose her.

'At first we lived in two rooms in the village, but granny felt choked
like, and she found a bit of a place on the moorside which had once been
used for the gentry to eat their lunch in when they were out shooting,
and the Squire was very kind a