she found me
a good one.

Father L'Homme-Dieu made me kindly welcome, too, and to him and to Abby
I could open my heart, and tell them all that had befallen me in these
three life-long months. But I found a strange difference in their manner
of receiving it; for whereas the Father understood my every feeling, and
would nod his head (a kind hand on my shoulder all the while), and say
yes, yes, I could not have done otherwise, and thus it was that a
gentleman should feel and act,--which was very soothing to me,--Abby, on
the other hand, though she must hear the story over and over again,
could never gain any patience in the hearing.

"What did they want?" she would cry, her good homely face the colour of
a red leaf. "An emperor would be the least that could suit them, I'll
warrant!" And though she dared not, after the first word, breathe
anything against my sweet young lady, she felt no such fear about the
old one, and I verily believe that if she had come upon Mme. de Lalange,
she would have torn her in pieces, being extraordinary strong in her
hands. Hag and witch were the kindest words she could give her; so that
at last I felt bound to keep away from the subject, from mere courtesy
to the absent. But this, as I have since found by observation, was the
mother-nature in Abby, which will fill the mildest woman with desire to
kill any one that hurts or grieves her child.

For some time I stuck close to my shoemaker's bench, seeking quiet, as
any creature does that is deeply wounded (for the wound was deep, my
dear; it was deep; but I would not have had it otherwise), and seeing
only those home friends, who had known the shape of my cradle, as it
were, and to whom I could speak or not, as my mind was. I found solid
comfort in the society of Ham, and would spend many hours in the old
grist-mill; sometimes sitting in the loft with him and the sparrows,
sometimes hanging over the stones, and watching the wheat pour down
between them, and hearing the roar and the grinding of them. The upper
and nether millstones! How Ham's words would come back, over and over,
as I thought how my life was ground between pain and longing! One day, I
mind, Ham came and found me so, and I suppose my face may have showed
part of what I felt; for he put his great hand on my shoulder, and
shouted in my ear, "Wheat flour, Jakey! prime wheat flour, and good riz
bread; I see it rising, don't you be afeard!" But by and by the
neighbours in the countr