ed,--which is all
proper, in course; why shouldn't she? And why shouldn't you, too,
Miss Lily?"

"Perhaps I shall, some day, Hopkins."

"There's no day like the present, Miss Lily. And I do say this, that
the man as pitched into him would be the man for my money." This,
which Hopkins spoke in the excitement of the moment, was perfectly
unintelligible to Lily, and Mrs Dale, who shuddered as she heard
him, said not a word to call for any explanation. "But," continued
Hopkins, "that's all as it may be, Miss Lily, and you be in the hands
of Providence,--as is others."

"Exactly so, Hopkins."

"But why should your mamma be all for going away? She ain't going
to marry no one. Here's the house, and there's she, and there's t'
squire; and why should she be for going away? So much going away all
at once can't be for any good. It's just a breaking up of everything,
as though nothing wasn't good enough for nobody. I never went away,
and I can't abide it."

"Well, Hopkins; it's settled now," said Mrs Dale, "and I'm afraid it
can't be unsettled."

"Settled;--well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs Dale, that he's to
live there all alone by hisself without any one to say a cross word
to,--unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe's worse than nobody,
he's so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can't stand it. If you
goes away, Mrs Dale, Mister Bernard, he'll be squire in less than
twelve months. He'll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?"

"I don't think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins."

"Ah, ma'am, you don't know him,--not as I knows him; all the ins and
outs and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the old
apple-trees that I've been a-handling for forty year. There's a deal
of bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they
ain't worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs,
and when the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit
will be the sweetest. It don't take much to kill one of them old
trees,--but there's life in 'm yet if they be well handled."

"I'm sure I hope my brother's life may be long spared to him," said
Mrs Dale.

"Then don't be taking yourself away, ma'am, into them gashly lodgings
at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is
not for me to speak, ma'am, of course. And I only came up now just to
know what things you'd like with you out of the greenhouse."

"Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you," said Mrs