o highly polished that it glittered and shone
in the light.

But there was a great deal of life and company up aloft, for a tribe of
blue pigeons had their home among those eaves and chimneys, and they
walked daintily up the steep roof with their small red feet while they
uttered their plaintive call to their young.

It was a strange fancy that prompted the cleaning of this door-handle.
"I mun keep it bright," the old woman would say who did it, "in case
anybody should come to call." No one but herself ever opened the door,
nobody within cared that she should bestow this trouble. Nobody, for
more than fifty years, ever had "come to call," and yet, partly because
the feigning of such a possibility seemed to connect her still with her
fellows of the work-a-day world, and partly because the young master,
her foster-brother, whom she deeply loved, had last been seen by her
with this door-handle in his hand, she faithfully continued every day to
begin her light tasks by rubbing it, and while so doing she would often
call to mind the early spring twilight she had opened her eyes in so
long ago, and heard creaking footsteps passing down the stairs; and then
how she had heard the great bolt of the door withdrawn, and had sprung
out of bed, and peering through her casement had seen him close it after
him, and with his young brother steal away among the ghostly white
pear-trees, never to return.

"And I didn't give it a thought that they could be after aught worse
than rook-shooting," she would murmur, "for all I heard a sort of a
sobbing on the stairs. It was hard on poor old Madam though, never to
take any leave of her; but all her life has been hard for that matter,
poor innocent old critter. Well, well, I hope it's not a sin to wish 'em
happy, spite of that bad action; and as for her, she's had her troubles
in this world, as all the parish is ready to testify, and no doubt but
what that will be considered to her in the world to come."

All the parish was always ready to testify that poor old Madam had had a
sight o' troubles. All the parish took a certain awful pleasure in
relating them; it was a sort of distinction to have among them such an
unfortunate woman and mother, so that the very shepherds' and ditchers'
wives plumed themselves upon it over those in the next parish, where the
old Squire and his wife had never lost one of their many children, or
had any trouble "to speak of." "For there was no call to count his
el