“I am quite well!” It was Queen Hildegarde who spoke now, in icy tones; but her coldness had no effect on her loquacious host.

“I s’pose ye’ll want ter lay by a day or two, till ye git used ter things, like; but then I sh’ll want ye ter take holt.  We’re short-handed now, and a smart, likely gal kin be a sight o’ help.  There’s the cows ter milk—­the’ ain’t but one o’ them thet’s real ugly, and she only kicks with the off hind-leg; so ’t’s easy enough ter look out for her.”

Hilda looked up in horror and amazement, and caught a twinkle in the farmer’s eye which told her that he was quizzing her.  The angry blood surged up even to the roots of her hair; but she disdained to reply, and continued to crumble her bread in silence.

“Father, what ails you?” said kind Dame Hartley.  “Why can’t you let the child alone?  She’s tired yet, and she doesn’t understand your joking ways.—­Don’t you mind the farmer, dear, one bit; his heart’s in the right place, but he do love to tease.”

But the good woman’s gentle words were harder to bear, at that moment, than her husband’s untimely jesting.  Hilda’s heart swelled high.  She felt that in another moment the tears must come; and murmuring a word of excuse, she hastily pushed back her chair and left the room.

An hour after, Hilda was sitting by the window of her own room, looking listlessly out on the soft summer evening, and listening to the melancholy cry of the whippoorwill, when she heard voices below.  The farmer was sitting with his pipe in the vine-clad porch just under the window; and now his wife had joined him, after “redding up” the kitchen, and giving orders for the next morning to the tidy maidservant.

“Well, Marm Lucy,” said Farmer Hartley’s gruff, hearty voice, “now thet you have your fine bird, I sh’d like to know what you’re a-goin’ to do with her.  She’s as pretty as a pictur, but a stuck-up piece as ever I see.  Don’t favor her mother, nor father either, as I can see.”

“Poor child!” said Dame Hartley, with a sigh, “I fear she will have a hard time of it before she comes to herself.  But I promised Miss Mildred that I would try my best; and you said you would help me, Jacob.”

“So I did, and so I will!” replied the farmer.  “But tell me agin, what was Miss Mildred’s idee?  I got the giner’l drift of it, but I can’t seem to put it together exactly.  I didn’t s’pose the gal was this kind, anyhow.”

“She told me,” Dame Hartley said, “that this child—­her only one, Jacob! you know what that means—­was getting into ways she didn’t like.  Going about with other city misses, who cared for nothing but pleasure, and who flattered and petted her because of her beauty and her pretty, proud ways (and maybe because of her father’s money too; though Miss Mildred didn’t say that), she was getting to think too much of herself, and to care too much for fine dresses and sweetmeats and idle chatter about nothing at all.” (How Hilda’s