out behind straight as an iron bar, and
her eyes flashing as though they were on fire, and all the while there
were the great trees crashing down all round in a way enough to make a
body sick with fright. We got her back safe, thank God; but how long
we shall keep her, I'm sure I don't know. Now she is drowning herself
in the lake, for she takes to the water like a duck, and now breaking
her neck off trees, and now going to ghosts in the churchyard for
company. It's wearing me to the bone--that's what it is."

Mr. Fraser smiled, for, to tell the truth, Pigott's bones were pretty
comfortably covered.

"Come," he said, "you would not part with her for all her wicked
deeds, would you?"

"Part with her," answered Pigott, in hot indignation, "part with my
little beauty? I would rather part with my head. The love, there never
was another like her, nor never will be, with her sweet ways; and, if
I know anything about girls, she'll be the beauty of England, she
will. She's made for a beautiful woman; and look at them eyes and
forehead and hair--where did you ever see the like? And, as for her
queer ways, what can you expect from a child as has got a great empty
mind and nothing to put in it, and no one to talk to but a common
woman like me, and a father"--here she dropped her voice--"as is a
miser, and hates the sight of his own flesh and blood?"

"Hush! you should not say such things, Pigott! Now I will tell you
something; I am going on to ask your master to allow me to educate
Angela."

"I'm right glad to hear it, sir. She's sharp enough to learn anything,
and it's kind of you to teach her. If you can make her mind like what
her body will be if she lives, somebody will be a lucky man one of
these days. Good-night, sir, and many thanks for bringing missy home."

Next day Angela began her education.

CHAPTER XVI

Reader, we are about to see Angela again, and to see a good deal of
her; but you must be prepared for a change in her personal appearance,
for the curtain has been down for ten years since last you met the
child whose odd propensities excited Pigott's wonder and indignation
and Mr. Fraser's interest; and ten years, as we all know, can work
many changes in the history of the world and individuals. In ten years
some have been swept clean off the board, and their places taken by
others; a few have grown richer, many poorer, some of us sadder, some
wiser, and all of us ten years