," she said deprecatingly.
"'Twas the thought of the children that come over me. I couldn't help
it. I had the both of thim in me arms before they could cry. Small
wonder me heart would be in thim! Many's the sad day I put over me,
thinkin' what would become of them, wid the poor masther goin' to the
bad. God forgive me for sayin' it! And sure now 'tis all settled and
done for--and the heavth of it off of our minds. Praise be to God!"

She paused to dry her tears.

"And what would you be thinkin' to do wid thim?" she asked presently in
a new and more personal tone.

Milbanke did not answer at once. His eyes strayed uneasily from one
object in the yard to another, while the frown of perplexity that had
puckered his brow since Asshlin's death reappeared more prominently
than before. At last, with a certain expression of puzzled resolution,
he looked up and met Hannah's attentive gaze.

"To tell you the truth, Hannah," he said, "that is the precise question
I have been asking myself ever since your poor master died."

There was a wait of some seconds while his listener digested the
information; then she nodded her head with slow impressiveness.

"I seen it meself," she said again. "Sure, I seen it as plain as
daylight. 'There's somethin' on his mind,' I says to meself. An' if it
isn't the poor masther's death,' I says, 'thin it's nothin' more nor
less than the natural feelin's of a single gentleman that finds himself
wid two grown daughters.'"

It was characteristic of Milbanke that he did not smile. He recognised
only one fact in the old servant's words--the fact that the state of
affairs over which he had been worrying in lonely perplexity had
suddenly been accurately, if roughly, voiced by some one else. He
glanced up with quick relief into the round, red face framed in the
dairy window.

"Hannah," he said honestly, "your surmise was perfectly correct."

For the first time a smile broke over her tear-stained face.

"I was right thin? 'Tis the children was troublin' you?"

A sharp gleam of inquiry shot from her eyes.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"An' why, now?" Again her tone changed, the irrepressible undercurrent
of native humour, native inquisitiveness and familiarity welling out
unconsciously. "Sure, they're good children."

"I do not doubt it. I do not doubt it for one moment."

"But they're troublin' you all the same?"

"Well, yes. Yes, I confess they are troubling me."

"Both of thim?" she ask