arty took for
her in an instant the dramatic zest and glamour.

"Look here, Mrs. Jellison," she said, going up to her; "I was just going
to leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps you'll take them, now
you're here. They're quite sweet, though they look green. They're the
best we've got, the gardener says."

"Oh, they are, are they?" said Mrs. Jellison, composedly, looking up at
her. "Well, put 'em down, miss. I dare say he'll eat 'em. He eats most
things, and don't want no doctor's stuff nayther, though his mother do
keep on at me for spoilin' his stummuck."

"You are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs. Jellison?" said
Marcella, taking a wooden stool, the only piece of furniture left in the
tiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, and squeezing herself into
a corner by the fire, whence she commanded the whole group. "No! don't
you turn Mr. Patton out of that chair, Mrs. Hurd, or I shall have to go
away."

For Mrs. Hurd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's ear that
it might be well for him to give up her one wooden arm-chair, in which
he was established, to Miss Boyce. But he, being old, deaf, and
rheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's peremptory gesture bade her
leave him in peace.

"Well, it's you that's the young 'un, ain't it, miss?" said Mrs.
Jellison, cheerfully. "Poor old Patton, he do get slow on his legs,
don't you, Patton? But there, there's no helping it when you're turned
of eighty."

And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye, being herself a young
thing not much over seventy, and energetic accordingly. Mrs. Jellison
passed for the village wit, and was at least talkative and excitable
beyond her fellows.

"Well, _you_ don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs. Jellison," said
Marcella, smiling at her.

The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were by now drawn
irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner, to her slim grace, and
the splendour of her large black hat and feathers. The new squire's
daughter had so far taken them by surprise. Some of them, however, were
by now in the second stage of critical observation--none the less
critical because furtive and inarticulate.

"Ah?" said Mrs. Jellison, interrogatively, with a high, long-drawn note
peculiar to her. "Well, I've never found you get forrarder wi' snarlin'
over what you can't help. And there's mercies. When you've had a husband
in his bed for fower year, miss, and he's took at last, you'll _