ked sore
against losing them, I did indeed, my lass, poor silly fool that I was!
and now here's God given me them back again. I'm a regular old Job now,
ain't I? Not that I was patient, like him; he was a sight better than
me--a sight better. Oh, you dear things, won't your grandmother love
you!'

'Had you twins of your own, grandmother?' asked her daughter-in-law.

'Ay, my dear, that I had, and little lads, too--the finest children you
ever saw; why, it was the talk of the country-side, my dear, what
beautiful bairns they was.'

'And how old were they when you lost them, grandmother?'

'Why, my dear,' said the old woman, '_my_ child was ten months and one
week old, and _his_ child was ten months and three weeks old--just a
fortnight's difference, my dear.'

'I thought you said they were _both_ yours, grandmother,' said Poppy.

'Ay, my darling, so they was; but that was how we got to talk of them.
You see, me and my master had been married nigh on five years, and
never had no childer (we lived up at the farm at that time), and then
these babies came, and I think our heads were fairly turned by
them--_he_ was well-nigh crazed, he was indeed, my dear. "Sally," he
says, when he came in to look at them, "you pick one and I'll have the
other--half-and-half, that's fair share," he says. "Now, Sally, you
choose first."

'"Well," says I, "I'll have the ginger-haired one; it's most like me." I
used to have ginger hair, my dear; you wouldn't believe it, for it's all
turned white now, but I had, just like Poppy there, beautiful ginger
hair. Some folks don't like the colour, my dear, but your grandfather
used to like it. Why, he said when he was courting me that my hair was
the colour of marigolds, and they was always his favourite flowers; he
had, 'em in his own little garden when he was a tiny lad, he said.

'Well, I picked the one with ginger hair, and called it _my_ child, and
he picked the black-haired one, which was the very picture of him--why,
he had a head like a crow's back, my dear. And so we each had a baby of
our own, and would you believe it, my lass, he took that care of it,
you'd have thought he was an old nurse--you would indeed. He washed it
and he dressed it,--ay, but I did laugh the first time,--and he gave it
the bottle, and he got a little girl from the village to come and mind
it when he was out, and in the evening we sat one on each side of the
fire, he with his child, and I with mine; and then at n