She again regarded me with a surprised stare.  “I believe,” she said, “I was quite mista’en in my thoughts of you:  but there is so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me.”

“And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.”

“Well, it was hard:  but what can a body do?  I thought more o’ th’ childer nor of mysel:  poor things!  They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on ’em but me.  I’m like to look sharpish.”

I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.

“You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked.

“But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why —­ not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no ‘brass’ and no house.  Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.”

“No more I ought,” said she:  “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I wor wrang —­ but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had.  You look a raight down dacent little crater.”

“That will do —­ I forgive you now.  Shake hands.”

She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.

Hannah was evidently fond of talking.  While I picked the fruit, and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about her deceased master and mistress, and “the childer,” as she called the young people.

Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of as ancient a family as could be found.  Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a house:  and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two hundred year old —­ for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to compare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale.  But she could remember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church vestry.”  Still, she allowed, “the owd maister was like other folk —­ naught mich out o’ t’ common way:  stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich like.”  The mistress was different.  She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the “bairns” had taken after her.  There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they had always been “of a mak’ of their own.”  Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses:  for they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was