air-haired
child playing about her knees. But Alice's face recalled her, and she
continued the story. She had, she said, dreaded the meeting with her new
mistress, and was prepared to find her "a sort of a heathen woman, who'd
pull down Master Horace till he couldn't call himself a gentleman."

But when she saw the graceful creature who received her with gentle
words and gestures of kindliness, and when she found her young master
not only content, but happy, and when she took in her arms the
laughing healthy baby, she felt--though she regretted its dark eyes and
hair--more at home than she could have believed possible. The nurseries
were so large and comfortable, and so much consideration was shown to
her, that she confessed, "I should have been more ungrateful than a cat
if I hadn't settled comfortable."

Then came nearly five happy years, during which time her young mistress
had found a warm and secure place in the good Yorkshire heart. "She was
that loving and that kind that Dick Burdas, the groom, used to say that
he believed she was an angel as had took up with them dark folks, to
show 'em what an angel was like." Mrs. Bentley went on:

"She wasn't always quite happy, and I wondered what brought the shadow
into her face, and why she would at times sigh that deep that I could
have cried. After a bit I knew what it was. It was the Maori in her. She
told me one night that she was a wicked woman, and ought never to have
married Master Horace, for she got tired sometimes of the English house
and its ways, and longed for her father's _whare_; (that's a native hut,
miss). She grieved something awful one day when she had been to see old
Tim, the Maori who lives behind the stables. She called herself a bad
and ungrateful woman, and thought there must be some evil spirit in her
tempting her into the old ways, because, when she saw Tim eating, and
you know what bad stuff they eat, she had fair longed to join him. She
gave me a fright I didn't get over for nigh a week. She leaned her bonny
head against my knee, and I stroked her cheek and hummed some silly
nursery tune,--for she was all of a tremble and like a child,--and she
fell asleep just where she was."

"Poor thing!" said Alice, softly.

"Eh, but it's what's coming that upsets me, ma'am. Eh, what suffering
for my pretty lamb, and her that wouldn't have hurt a worm! Baby would
be about six months old when she came in one day with him in her arms,
and they _were_ a pi