passes belief.  It’s true, nevertheless, account for it as you may, that this was Rosanna Spearman’s favourite walk, except when she went once or twice to Cobb’s Hole, to see the only friend she had in our neighbourhood, of whom more anon.  It’s also true that I was now setting out for this same place, to fetch the girl in to dinner, which brings us round happily to our former point, and starts us fair again on our way to the sands.

I saw no sign of the girl in the plantation.  When I got out, through the sand-hills, on to the beach, there she was, in her little straw bonnet, and her plain grey cloak that she always wore to hide her deformed shoulder as much as might be—­there she was, all alone, looking out on the quicksand and the sea.

She started when I came up with her, and turned her head away from me.  Not looking me in the face being another of the proceedings, which, as head of the servants, I never allow, on principle, to pass without inquiry—­I turned her round my way, and saw that she was crying.  My bandanna handkerchief—­one of six beauties given to me by my lady—­was handy in my pocket.  I took it out, and I said to Rosanna, “Come and sit down, my dear, on the slope of the beach along with me.  I’ll dry your eyes for you first, and then I’ll make so bold as to ask what you have been crying about.”

When you come to my age, you will find sitting down on the slope of a beach a much longer job than you think it now.  By the time I was settled, Rosanna had dried her own eyes with a very inferior handkerchief to mine—­cheap cambric.  She looked very quiet, and very wretched; but she sat down by me like a good girl, when I told her.  When you want to comfort a woman by the shortest way, take her on your knee.  I thought of this golden rule.  But there!  Rosanna wasn’t Nancy, and that’s the truth of it!

“Now, tell me, my dear,” I said, “what are you crying about?”

“About the years that are gone, Mr. Betteredge,” says Rosanna quietly.  “My past life still comes back to me sometimes.”

“Come, come, my girl,” I said, “your past life is all sponged out.  Why can’t you forget it?”

She took me by one of the lappets of my coat.  I am a slovenly old man, and a good deal of my meat and drink gets splashed about on my clothes.  Sometimes one of the women, and sometimes another, cleans me of my grease.  The day before, Rosanna had taken out a spot for me on the lappet of my coat, with a new composition, warranted to remove anything.  The grease was gone, but there was a little dull place left on the nap of the cloth where the grease had been.  The girl pointed to that place, and shook her head.

“The stain is taken off,” she said.  “But the place shows, Mr. Betteredge—­the place shows!”

A remark which takes a man unawares by means of his own coat is not an easy remark to answer.  Something in the girl herself, too, made me particularly sorry for her just then.  She had nice brown eyes, plain as she was in other ways—­and she looked at me with a sort of respect for my happy old age and my good character, as things for ever out of her own reach, which made my heart heavy for our second housemaid.  Not feeling myself able to comfort her, there was only one other thing to do.  That thing was—­to take her in to dinner.