d not
speak. She wished to say, "I cannot explain to you here, with people
around, what I want to do with my guinea, but when you come to our
cottage you shall know all."

After Susan had left, Miss Somers turned to the obliging shopkeeper
who was folding up all the goods he had opened. "You have had a great
deal of trouble," she said, "and as Susan will not choose a gown for
herself, I must find one for her," and she chose the prettiest.

While the man rolled up the parcel, Miss Somers asked him many
questions about Susan, and he was only too glad to be able to tell
what he knew about the good girl.

"No later than last May morning," he said, "Susan acted as it will
please you to hear. She was to have been Queen of the May, which among
the children in our village is a thing a good deal thought of. But
Susan's mother was ill, and Susan, after being up with her all night,
would not go out in the morning, even when they brought the crown to
her. She put it upon my daughter Rose's head with her own hands, and
to be sure Rose loves her as well as if she were her own sister. If I
praise Susan it is not that I am any relation of the Prices, but just
that I wish her well, as does every one that knows her. I'll send the
parcel up to the Abbey, shall I, ma'am?"

"If you please," said Miss Somers, "and as soon as your new goods come
in, let us know. You will, I hope, find us good customers and
well-wishers," she added, with a smile, "for those who wish others
well surely deserve to have well-wishers themselves."

But to return to Susan. When she left the shop she carefully put the
bright guinea into the purse with the twelve shillings her little
friends had given her on Mayday. She next added, as far as she could
remember them, the bills for bread that were owing to her, and found
they came to about thirty-eight shillings. Then she hoped that by some
means or other she might, during the week her father was to remain at
home, make up the nine guineas that would enable him to stay with them
altogether. "If that could but be," she said to herself, "how happy it
would make my mother! She is already a great deal better since I told
her my father would stay for a week longer. Ah! but she would not have
blessed Attorney Case, if she had known about my poor Daisy." Susan
had now reached the path that led to the meadow by the river-side. She
wanted to go there alone and take leave of her lamb. But her little
brothers, who were watch