“Eliza’s cooking an excellent dinner!” he said.  And they went through the kitchen into the garden.

“You see what a piece of ground I have.  We are enclosing it.”  And Owen saw two little boys painting a paling.  “Now, do you like the green?  It was too green, but this morning I put a little yellow into it; it is better now.”  They walked round the acre of rough ground overlooking the valley, Owen saying that Evelyn was quite a landed proprietor.

“But who are these boys?  You have quite a number,” he said, coming upon three more digging, or trying to dig.

“They are digging the celery-bed.”

“But one is a hunchback, he can’t do much work; and that one has a short leg; the third boy seems all right, but he isn’t more than seven or eight.  I am afraid you won’t have very much celery this year.”  They passed through the wicket into the farther end of Evelyn’s domain, which part projected on the valley, and there they came upon two more children, one of whom was blind.

“This poor child—­what work can he do?”

“You’d be surprised; and his ear is excellent.  We’re thinking of putting him to piano-tuning.”

“We are thinking?”

“Yes, Owen; these little boys live here with me in the new wing.  I’m afraid they are not very comfortable there, but they don’t complain.”

“Seven little crippled boys, whom you look after!”

“Six—­the seventh is my servant’s son; he is delicate, but he isn’t a cripple.  We don’t call him her son here, she is nominally his aunt.”

“You look after these boys, and go up to London to earn their living?”

“I earn sufficient to run my little establishment.”

As they returned to the cottage, one of the boys thrust his spade into the ground.

“Please, miss, may we stay up a little longer this evening?  It won’t be dark till nine or half-past, miss.”

“Yes, you can stay up.”  And Owen and Evelyn went into the house.  “I do hope, Owen, that Eliza’s cooking will not seem to you too utterly undistinguished.”

“You have forgotten, Evelyn, that I have been living on hunter’s fare for the last two years.”

At that moment Eliza put the soup-tureen on the table.

“Why, the soup is excellent!  An excellent soup, Eliza!”

“There is a chicken coming, Sir Owen, and Miss Innes told me to be sure to put plenty of butter on it before putting it into the oven, that that was the way you liked it cooked.”

“I am glad you did, Eliza; the buttering of the chicken is what we always overlook in England.  We never seem to understand the part that good butter plays in cooking; only in England does any one talk of such a thing as cooking-butter.”  And he detained Eliza, who fidgeted before him, thinking of the vegetables waiting in the kitchen, of what a strange man he was, while he told her that his cook, a Frenchman, always insisted on having his butter from France, costing him, Owen, nearly three shillings a pound.