ou have been very kind to me, Mrs Pipkin, and I
shall be sorry to leave you.'

'Oh, Mrs Hurtle, you can't understand what it is to me. It isn't only
my feelings. The likes of me can't stand by their feelings only, as
their betters do. I've never been above telling you what a godsend
you've been to me this summer;--have I? I've paid everything, butcher,
baker, rates and all, just like clockwork. And now you're going away!'
Then Mrs Pipkin began to sob.

'I suppose I shall see Mr Crumb before I go,' said Mrs Hurtle.

'She don't deserve it; do she? And even now she never says a word
about him that I call respectful. She looks on him as just being
better than Mrs Buggins's children. That's all.'

'She'll be all right when he has once got her home.'

'And I shall be all alone by myself,' said Mrs Pipkin, with her apron
up to her eyes.

It was after this that Mrs Hurtle received Hetta's letter. She had as
yet returned no answer to Paul Montague,--nor had she intended to send
any written answer. Were she to comply with his request she could do
so best by writing to the girl who was concerned rather than to him.
And though she wrote no such letter she thought of it,--of the words
she would use were she to write it, and of the tale which she would
have to tell. She sat for hours thinking of it, trying to resolve
whether she would tell the tale,--if she told it at all,--in a manner
to suit Paul's purpose, or so as to bring that purpose utterly to
shipwreck. She did not doubt that she could cause the shipwreck were
she so minded. She could certainly have her revenge after that fashion.
But it was a woman's fashion, and, as such, did not recommend itself to
Mrs Hurdle's feelings. A pistol or a horsewhip, a violent seizing by
the neck, with sharp taunts and bitter-ringing words, would have made
the fitting revenge. If she abandoned that she could do herself no
good by telling a story of her wrongs to another woman.

Then came Hetta's note, so stiff, so cold, so true,--so like the letter
of an Englishwoman, as Mrs Hurtle said to herself. Mrs Hurtle smiled
as she read the letter. 'I make this proposition not thinking that
anything you can say to me can change my mind.' Of course the girl's
mind would be changed. The girl's mind, indeed, required no change.
Mrs Hurtle could see well enough that the girl's heart was set upon
the man. Nevertheless she did not doubt but that she could tell the
story after such a fashion as to make