dith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I
could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell
at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done
the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big
rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in
another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only
her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader
i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had
such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your
mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the
very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to
take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at
Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight
any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same
from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as
I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit
different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life
spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent."

"She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving,
self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very
fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same
sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven
years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt
Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure
I've found it so."

"I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you,
I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how.
I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come
and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for
man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry
a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some
decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave
off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith
ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering
Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your
uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been
good-natur'd to m