ad to see her and they had got the baking and washing all out of
the way. She had even made each of the children a doughcake with a bit
of brown sugar in it.

"I had 'em all pipin' hot when they came in from playin' on th' moor.
An' th' cottage all smelt o' nice, clean hot bakin' an' there was a
good fire, an' they just shouted for joy. Our Dickon he said our
cottage was good enough for a king."

In the evening they had all sat round the fire, and Martha and her
mother had sewed patches on torn clothes and mended stockings and
Martha had told them about the little girl who had come from India and
who had been waited on all her life by what Martha called "blacks"
until she didn't know how to put on her own stockings.

"Eh! they did like to hear about you," said Martha. "They wanted to
know all about th' blacks an' about th' ship you came in. I couldn't
tell 'em enough."

Mary reflected a little.

"I'll tell you a great deal more before your next day out," she said,
"so that you will have more to talk about. I dare say they would like
to hear about riding on elephants and camels, and about the officers
going to hunt tigers."

"My word!" cried delighted Martha. "It would set 'em clean off their
heads. Would tha' really do that, Miss? It would be same as a wild
beast show like we heard they had in York once."

"India is quite different from Yorkshire," Mary said slowly, as she
thought the matter over. "I never thought of that. Did Dickon and
your mother like to hear you talk about me?"

"Why, our Dickon's eyes nearly started out o' his head, they got that
round," answered Martha. "But mother, she was put out about your
seemin' to be all by yourself like. She said, 'Hasn't Mr. Craven got
no governess for her, nor no nurse?' and I said, 'No, he hasn't, though
Mrs. Medlock says he will when he thinks of it, but she says he mayn't
think of it for two or three years.'"

"I don't want a governess," said Mary sharply.

"But mother says you ought to be learnin' your book by this time an'
you ought to have a woman to look after you, an' she says: 'Now,
Martha, you just think how you'd feel yourself, in a big place like
that, wanderin' about all alone, an' no mother. You do your best to
cheer her up,' she says, an' I said I would."

Mary gave her a long, steady look.

"You do cheer me up," she said. "I like to hear you talk."

Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held
in her