fortunes and Indians.
"Gaarge" Lunsden, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily
for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to "Meriker" and had earned there
eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much-talked over
fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and
importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lunsden. A
place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as
well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago
as the new Lady Anstruthers, the story that she herself "had money" had
been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns
in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave at all, would have
bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a
period of unheard of well-being in Stornham village; everyone remembered
the hundred pounds the bride had given to poor Wilson when his place had
burned down, but the village had of course learned, by its occult means,
that Sir Nigel and the Dowager had been angry and that there had been a
quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had
been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been
seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature; she had lost her
looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham village
saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the
dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London
and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the Court. Her
ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their
wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it
was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and
kitchen boilers to fall into ruin, the simple, leading article of faith
being that even American money belonged properly to England.

As Miss Vanderpoel walked at a light, swinging pace through the one
village street the gazers felt with Kedgers that something new was
passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight, and with a
friendliness somehow dominating, at the curious women; her handsome eyes
met those of the men in a human questioning; she smiled and nodded to
the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on
its feet, in running to join some others stumbled and fell on the path
before her. Opening its mouth in the i