d.

He knew his place. For an hour past he had been sitting, as became a
servant, beyond earshot of the sisters' talk, yet within call, should
they summon him. Now the goddess had descended from her mountain
with a command, and he ran toward the woodstack as he would have run
and plunged into the water-dyke, had she bidden him.

He returned to find her waiting with her sleeves tucked above her
elbows.

"Oh, Johnny--I forgot the tinder-box!" she cried.

He dropped his burdens and produced it triumphantly from his tail
pocket.

"I thought of that!"

"But you must not!"--as he dropped on his knees and began to unbind
and break up the sticks. "This is my business. I am going into
service, in ten days--at Kelstein: and you must watch and tell me
what I do amiss."

She pulled the faggot towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the
fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as
basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she
struck flint on steel, caught the spark on tinder, and blew.
Johnny watched the glow on her cheeks wakening and fading, and,
watching, fell into a brown study.

"There!" she exclaimed, straightening herself upon her knees as the
blaze caught. "Is that a good omen for Kelstein?"

Her eyes were on the sticks, and in their crackling she did not
listen for his answer, but commanded him to take a pitcher of water
and pour, while she mixed and kneaded the meal. To the making of
bread, cakes, pastry, Hetty brought a born gift; a hand so light,
quick, and cool, that Johnny could have groaned for his own fumbling
fingers. A dozen cakes were finished and banked in the wood-ashes as
the fire died down to a steadily glowing mass. By this time the
landscape about them lay flat to the eye and gray, touched with the
faint gold of moonrise, and just then Emilia called down from the
mound that the travellers were in sight on the Bawtry road.

The others ran to meet them: but Hetty remained by her task, silent,
and Johnny silent beside her. Together they spread the two meals,
one beside the fire for the family, the other some fifty yards off
for the harvesters, now moving towards the rick-yard with the last
load.

Hetty was not her mother's favourite. Emilia and Patty divided that
honour by consent, though the balance appeared now and then to
incline towards Patty. But between Mrs. Wesley and her fairest
daughter there rested always a shadow of restraint, curi