illage people had understood it all, listening
to her and answering her without the proffer of any outspoken parley.

"Lord bless 'ee," said Mrs Crump, the postmistress,--and Mrs Crump
was supposed to have the sourest temper in Allington,--"whenever
I look at thee, Miss Lily, I thinks that surely thee is the
beautifulest young 'ooman in all these parts."

"And you are the crossest old woman," said Lily, laughing, and giving
her hand to the postmistress.

"So I be," said Mrs Crump. "So I be." Then Lily sat down in the
cottage and asked after her ailments. With Mrs Hearn it was the same.
Mrs Hearn, after that first meeting which has been already mentioned,
petted and caressed her, but spoke no further word of her misfortune.
When Lily called a second time upon Mrs Boyce, which she did boldly
by herself, that lady did begin one other word of commiseration. "My
dearest Lily, we have all been made so unhappy--" So far Mrs Boyce
got, sitting close to Lily and striving to look into her face; but
Lily, with a slightly heightened colour, turned sharp round upon
one of the Boyce girls, tearing Mrs Boyce's commiseration into the
smallest shreds. "Minnie," she said, speaking quite loud, almost with
girlish ecstasy, "what do you think Tartar did yesterday? I never
laughed so much in my life." Then she told a ludicrous story about a
very ugly terrier which belonged to the squire. After that even Mrs
Boyce made no further attempt. Mrs Dale and Bell both understood that
such was to be the rule,--the rule even to them. Lily would speak to
them occasionally on the matter,--to one of them at a time, beginning
with some almost single word of melancholy resignation, and then
would go on till she opened her very bosom before them; but no such
conversation was ever begun by them. But now, in these busy days of
the packing, that topic seemed to have been banished altogether.

"Mamma," she said, standing on the top rung of a house-ladder, from
which position she was handing down glass out of a cupboard, "are you
sure that these things are ours? I think some of them belong to the
house."

"I'm sure about that bowl at any rate, because it was my mother's
before I was married."

"Oh, dear, what should I do if I were to break it? Whenever I handle
anything very precious I always feel inclined to throw it down and
smash it. Oh! it was as nearly gone as possible, mamma; but that was
your fault."

"If you don't take care you'll be nearly gone