she could enjoy in any one of the cottages throughout Botfield.  Moreover, she could get work for herself on three days in the week, to help a washerwoman, who gave her ninepence a day, besides letting little Nan go with her, and have, as she said, ‘the run of her teeth.’  She had her admirers, too—­young collier lads, who told her truly enough she was the cleanest, neatest, tidiest lass in all Botfield.  So Martha Fern regarded their residence on the cinder-hill with more complacency than could have been expected.  The only circumstance which in her secret heart she considered a serious drawback was her very near neighbourhood to Miss Anne.

‘Stephen,’ said Martha one Saturday night, after their work was done, ’I’ve been thinking how it’s only thee that’s trying to keep the commandments.  I’m not such a scholar as thee; but I’ve heard thy chapter read till it’s in my head, as well as if I could read it off book myself.  So I’m thinking I ought to love my enemies as well as thee; and I’ve asked Black Bess to come and have a cup of tea with us to-morrow.’

‘Black Bess!’ exclaimed Stephen, with a feeling of some displeasure.

‘Ah,’ said Martha, ’she’s always calling me—­a shame to be heard.  But I’ve quite forgiven her; and to-morrow I’ll let her see I can make pikelets as well as her mother; and we’ll have out the three china cups; only grandfather and little Nan must have common ones.  I thought I’d better tell thee; and then thee’lt make haste home from church in the afternoon.’

‘Black Bess isn’t a good friend for thee,’ answered Stephen, who was better acquainted with the pit-girl’s character than was Martha, and felt troubled at the idea of any companionship between them.

‘But we are to love our enemies,’ persisted Martha, ’and do good to them that hate us.  At any rate I asked her, and she said she’d come.’

‘I don’t think it means we are to ask our enemies to tea,’ said Stephen, in perplexity.  ’If she was badly off, like, and in want of a meal’s meat, it ’ud be another thing; I’d do it gladly.  And on a Sunday too!  Oh, Martha, it doesn’t seem right.’

‘Oh, nothing’s right that I do!’ replied Martha pettishly; ’thee’rt afraid I’ll get as good as thee, and then thee cannot crow over me.  But I’ll not spend a farthing of thy money, depend upon it.  I’m not without some shillings of my own, I reckon.  Thee should let me love my enemies as well as thee, I think; but thee’lt want to go up to heaven alone next.’

Stephen said no more, though Martha continued talking peevishly about Black Bess.  She was not at all satisfied in her own mind that she was doing right; but Bess had met her at a neighbour’s house, where she was boasting of her skill in making pikelets, and she had been drawn out by her sneers and mocking to give her a kind of challenge to come and taste them.  She wanted now to make herself and Stephen believe that she was doing it out of love and forgiveness towards poor Bess; but she could not succeed in the deception.  All the Sunday morning she was bustling about, and sadly chafing the grandfather by making him move hither and thither out of the way.  It was quite a new experience to have any one coming to tea; and all her hospitable and housekeeping feelings were greatly excited by the approaching event.