bles so clean you longed to stroke them; the salt-coffer in one
chimney-corner, and a three-cornered chair in the other, the walls behind
handsomely tapestried with flitches of bacon, and the ceiling ornamented
with pendent hams.

'Sit ye down, sir--do,' said Dorcas, moving the three-cornered chair,
'an' let me get you somethin' after your long journey. Here, Becky, come
an' tek the baby.'

Becky, a red-armed damsel, emerged from the adjoining back-kitchen, and
possessed herself of baby, whose feelings or fat made him conveniently
apathetic under the transference.

'What'll you please to tek, sir, as I can give you? I'll get you a rasher
o' bacon i' no time, an' I've got some tea, or be-like you'd tek a glass
o' rum-an'-water. I know we've got nothin' as you're used t' eat and
drink; but such as I hev, sir, I shall be proud to give you.'

'Thank you, Dorcas; I can't eat or drink anything. I'm not hungry or
tired. Let us talk about Tina. Has she spoken at all?'

'Niver since the fust words. "Dear Dorkis," says she, "tek me in;" an'
then went off into a faint, an' not a word has she spoken since. I get
her t' eat little bits an' sups o' things, but she teks no notice o'
nothin'. I've took up Bessie wi' me now an' then'--here Dorcas lifted to
her lap a curly-headed little girl of three, who was twisting a corner of
her mother's apron, and opening round eyes at the gentleman--'folks'll
tek notice o' children sometimes when they won't o' nothin' else. An' we
gathered the autumn crocuses out o' th' orchard, and Bessie carried 'em
up in her hand, an' put 'em on the bed. I knowed how fond Miss Tina was
o' flowers an' them things, when she was a little un. But she looked at
Bessie an' the flowers just the same as if she didn't see 'em. It cuts me
to th' heart to look at them eyes o' hers; I think they're bigger nor
iver, an' they look like my poor baby's as died, when it got so thin--O
dear, its little hands you could see thro' 'em. But I've great hopes if
she was to see you, sir, as come from the Manor, it might bring back her
mind, like.'

Maynard had that hope too, but he felt cold mists of fear gathering round
him after the few bright warm hours of joyful confidence which had passed
since he first heard that Caterina was alive. The thought _would_ urge
itself upon him that her mind and body might never recover the strain
that had been put upon them--that her delicate thread of life had already
nearly spun itself out.