“Indeed!”

“But still, as you think I ought to do something for her, I certainly will.”

“I shall go and see her myself this afternoon,” answered Mr. Augustus Mortimer hastily.  “I will not fail to report to you how I find her.”

“Her talk was naturally painful to the dear grandmother,” continued Mrs. Melcombe.

Mr. Mortimer looked keenly attentive, but he did not ask any question, and as she said no more, he almost immediately withdrew, and walked straight across the fields to the cottage of this old woman.

Nothing more was said that evening concerning the repairs, or concerning this visit; but the next morning Mr. Mortimer renewed his proposition, and after a little modest hesitation, she accepted it; then, remembering his request concerning old Becky, she told him she had that morning sent her a blanket and some soup.  “And, by-the-bye, Mr. Mortimer, did she tell you the story that used to annoy the dear grandmother?” she inquired.

Mr. Mortimer was so long in answering, that she looked up at him, and when he caught her eye he answered.  “Yes.”

“He doesn’t like it any more than his mother did,” she thought, so she said no more, and he almost immediately went away to give orders about the proposed estimates.

Mrs. Melcombe and Laura made Mr. Mortimer very comfortable, and when he went away he left them highly pleased, for, having been told of their intended journey to Paris, he had proposed to them to come and spend a few days at his house, considering it the first stage of their tour.

So he departed, and no more dirt was thrown at him.  The tide began to turn in favour of the Mortimers, people had seen the mild face and venerable gentleness of the Mortimer who was poor, they had now handled the gold of the one that was rich.

“Old Madam was a saint,” they observed, “but she couldn’t come and look arter us hersen, poor dear.  Farmers are allers hard on poor folk.  So he was bent on having another well atop o’ the hill ‘stead o’ the bottom.  Why let him, then, if he liked!  Anyhow, there was this good in it—­the full buckets would be to carry down hill ’stead of up.  As to the water o’ the ould well being foul and breeding fevers, it might be, and then again it might not be; if folks were to be for ever considering whether water was foul, they’d never drink in peace!”

The moment he was gone, Mrs. Melcombe turned her thoughts to Laura’s swain, and excited such hopes of pleasure from the visit to Paris in the mind of her sister-in-law, that Joseph’s devotion began to be less fascinating to her, besides which there was something inexpressibly sweet to her imaginative mind in the notion of being thwarted and watched.  She pictured to herself the fine young man haunting the lonely glen, hoping to catch a sight of her, and smiting his brow as men do in novels, sighing and groaning over his lowly birth and his slender means.  She wished Joseph would write that her sister-in-law might rob her of the letter; but Joseph didn’t write, he knew better.  At the end of the fortnight he appeared; coming to church, and sitting in full view of the ladies, looking not half so well in his shining Sunday clothes of Birmingham make, as he had done in his ordinary working suit.