ll you."

"Nonsense, child, go on."

"She--she told Aunt Matty to go along and get married," tittered Fin,
"and she could stay at home and mend her husband's stockings, and leave
people alone; and Aunt Matty thought it so horrible that she came home
and went to bed."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Mr Mervyn. "Mrs Poltrene has a temper; but here
we are--you'll come in?"

Tiny was for drawing back, but her sister prevailed. They had been
walking along the lane, and had now reached a long, low cottage, built
after the fashion of the district, with massive blocks of granite, and
roofed with slabs of the same. There was a strip of garden, though
gardens were almost needless, banked up as the place was on all sides
with the luxuriant wild growth of the valley. On one side, though, of
the doorway was the simple old fuchsia of bygone days, with a stem here
as thick as a man's wrist--a perfect fuchsia tree, in fact; and on the
other side, leafing and flowering right over the roof, a gigantic
hydrangea, the flower we see in eastern England in pots, but here of a
delicious blue.

"Any one at home," said Mr Mervyn, walking straight in. "Here, Mrs
Trelyan, I've brought you two visitors," and a very old, white-haired
woman, who was making a pilchard net, held her hand over her forehead.

"Sit down, girls--sit down," she said, in the melodious sing-song voice
of the Cornish people. "I know them--they come and see me sometimes.
Eh? How am I? But middling--but middling. It's been a bad season for
me. Oh, soup? Ah, you've brought me some more soup; you may empty it
into that basin. I didn't want it; but you may leave it. They've
brought me up some hake and a few herrings, so I could have got on
without. That last soup was too salt, master."

"Was it?" said Mr Mervyn, giving a merry glance at Fin. "Well, never
mind, I'll speak to Mrs Dykes about it."

"Ay, she's an east-country woman. Those folks don't know much about
cooking. Well, young ladies, I hear you have been to London."

"Yes, Mrs Trelyan."

"And you're glad to come back?"

"Yes, that we are," said Fin.

"Ay, I've heard it's a poor, lost sort of place, London," said the old
lady. "I never went, and I never would. My son William wanted to take
me once in his boot; but I wouldn't go. Your father was a wise man to
buy Tolcarne; but it'll never be such a place as Penreife."

"You know young Trevor's coming back?" said Mr Mervyn.

"Ay, I know," said the o