The thought of his dead daughter never left him.  Through the day, when he was at work, through the long evenings when he sat silent and sad, gazing into the fire, and through the nights when he lay sleepless, he brooded over the wrongs his daughter’s husband had done them all, and was full of remorse for his own hard-heartedness—­as he called it now—­in not having forgiven her at once when she ran away from her home.  And more than all was he haunted by the thought of her lonely death after her cruelly hard life.  He pictured her lying in her pauper’s grave in an unknown burial-ground, away amongst strangers, unknown, uncared for, unremembered, and these thoughts aged him fast.

Jessie was too young to notice it, but those older saw how he began to stoop, how his feet lagged as he walked, how the colour had faded from his hair and from the bright blue eyes, which had been such a noticeable feature of his face.  All the life and fun had gone out of him too; even Jessie could not rouse him.

Patience bore her grief in another way, it was merged to some extent in her anxiety about her husband.  With regard to Lizzie she felt less anxiety and pain about her now than she had done when Lizzie had been alive, and living a miserable life with the weak, ne’er-do-well husband who had been the ruin of her happiness and theirs.  Trouble left its mark on Patience too, she became gentler and quieter, she seemed to lose some of her strength and spirit, and to lean more and more on her little granddaughter.  And Jessie, pleased and proud to be useful, and trusted and able to help, turned to with a will, and by degrees took a great deal on her young shoulders.

She still went to Miss Grace Barley to be taught, for the hours suited them all well, and though her grandmother protested often that it was too much for Miss Grace to do, and declared that Jessie must go to the school along with the others, Miss Grace begged to be allowed to keep her.

“Jessie can repay me by coming and being our maid by and by,” she said laughingly—­“that is if she wants to go out into service, and you can spare her, Mrs. Dawson.”

“I shall have to some day,” said Mrs. Dawson, with a sigh and a smile; “she will have to support herself, of course, when she grows up, and it’s our duty to see she has the training.”

So it became the dream of Jessie’s life to be Miss Barley’s maid, to live in the “White Cottage,” and have the joy and honour of keeping it in the beautiful order in which she had always seen it.

It had been a curious, uncommon education that the child had had, but the results were certainly satisfactory.  She could darn and sew beautifully, make and mend, knit and patch, and read and write, cook a little, and do all manner of housework, while she was quite clever in her knowledge of flowers and their ways.

Every Saturday morning she devoted herself to helping her grandmother clean the cottage and prepare for Sunday.  It was her task to polish all the knives and forks, to dust the bedrooms and the kitchen.  Her grandmother would not let her do the harder work, such as scrubbing the floors or tables, though Jessie often longed to try; but while granny was busy washing the floors, it was Jessie’s great delight to mount on a chair and clean the little lattice windows of the kitchen and parlour.