them came together! I've heard tell of
such a thing once or twice, but never of all living and thriving. Folk
said it was a judgment on my Lady that she spoke sharp and hard to a
poor beggar woman with a child on each arm. It was not a week out before
my Lady herself was down, quite unexpected, as I may say, for she was
staying here for a week, with a lot of company, when these three was
born. They do say she was nigh beside herself that the like of that
should have happened to her. Mr. Wayland, he was not so ill pleased, but
the poor little things had to be got out of the house any way, for she
could not abear to hear of them. Mrs. Rolfe, as was an old servant of
the family, took that one, and I was right glad to have you, my pretty
one, for I had just lost my babe at a fortnight old, and the third was
sent to Goody Bowles, for want of a better. They says as how my Lady
means to bring them out one by one, and to make as this here is bigger,
and the other up stairs is lesser, and never let on that they are all of
an age."

The good gossip must have presumed greatly on the children's want of
comprehension if she did not suppose that they understood her at least
as well as the young lady to whom her dialect was strange.

"And has she not seen them?"

"Never till last Monday, if you'll believe me miss, when she drove down
in her coach, and the children were all brought home. I thought she
might have said something handsome, considering the poor little babe
as my Missy here was when I had her--not so long as my hand--and scarce
able to cry enough to show she was alive. The work I and my good man had
with her! He would walk up and down half the night with her. Not as we
grudged it. He is as fond of the child as myself; and Mr. Wayland, he
knew it. 'She has a good nurse, dame,' says he to me, with the water in
his eyes, before he went to foreign parts. But my Lady! When the little
one as had been with Goody Bowles--an ignorant woman, you see--cried and
clung to her, and kicked, 'Little savages all,' says my Lady. There was
thanks to them that had had more work to rear her children than ever
with one of her own! 'Perfect little rustics!' she said, even when you
made your curtsey as pretty as could be, didn't you, my little lammie?"

"Mammy Rolfe taught me to make my curtsey like a London lady," said the
other child, the most advanced in manners.

"Aha! little pitchers have long ears; but, bless you, they don't know
what i