out sometimes about the good master they had lost, all and every one
of us. But the fowls would take no notice of it, except to cluck for
barley; and the maidens, though they had liked him well, were thinking
of their sweethearts as the spring came on. Mother thought it wrong of
them, selfish and ungrateful; and yet sometimes she was proud that none
had such call as herself to grieve for him. Only Annie seemed to go
softly in and out, and cry, with nobody along of her, chiefly in the
corner where the bees are and the grindstone. But somehow she would
never let anybody behold her; being set, as you may say, to think it
over by herself, and season it with weeping. Many times I caught her,
and many times she turned upon me, and then I could not look at her, but
asked how long to dinner-time.

Now in the depth of the winter month, such as we call December, father
being dead and quiet in his grave a fortnight, it happened me to be out
of powder for practice against his enemies. I had never fired a shot
without thinking, 'This for father's murderer'; and John Fry said that
I made such faces it was a wonder the gun went off. But though I could
hardly hold the gun, unless with my back against a bar, it did me good
to hear it go off, and hope to have hitten his enemies.

'Oh, mother, mother,' I said that day, directly after dinner, while she
was sitting looking at me, and almost ready to say (as now she did seven
times in a week), 'How like your father you are growing! Jack, come here
and kiss me'--'oh, mother, if you only knew how much I want a shilling!'

'Jack, you shall never want a shilling while I am alive to give thee
one. But what is it for, dear heart, dear heart?'

'To buy something over at Porlock, mother. Perhaps I will tell you
afterwards. If I tell not it will be for your good, and for the sake of
the children.'

'Bless the boy, one would think he was threescore years of age at least.
Give me a little kiss, you Jack, and you shall have the shilling.'

For I hated to kiss or be kissed in those days: and so all honest boys
must do, when God puts any strength in them. But now I wanted the powder
so much that I went and kissed mother very shyly, looking round the
corner first, for Betty not to see me.

But mother gave me half a dozen, and only one shilling for all of them;
and I could not find it in my heart to ask her for another, although I
would have taken it. In very quick time I ran away with the shilling
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