she had not known at Epworth; a pound saved may be a pound gained, but a pound earned can be held in the hand, and the touch makes a wonderful difference.  The girls had flung themselves heartily into the farm-work:  they talked of it, at night, around the kitchen hearth (for of the two sitting-rooms one had been given up to their father for his library, and the other Hetty vowed to be “too grand for the likes of dairy-women.”  Also the marsh-vapours in the Isle of Axholme can be agueish after sunset, even in summer, and they found the fire a comfort).  Hetty had described these rural economies in a long letter to Samuel at Westminster, and been answered by an “Heroick Poem,” pleasantly facetious: 

     “The spacious glebe around the house
      Affords full pasture to the cows,
      Whence largely milky nectar flows,
       O sweet and cleanly dairy!”

     “Unless or Moll, or Anne, or you,
      Your duty should neglect to do,
      And then ’ware haunches black and blue
       By pinching of a fairy.”

—­With much in the same easy vein about “sows and pigs and porkets,” and the sisters’ housewifely duties: 

     “Or lusty Anne, or feeble Moll,
        Sage Pat or sober Hetty.”

And the sisters were amused by the lines and committed them to heart.

They had learnt of the pleasures of life mainly through books; and now their simple enjoyment was, as it were, more real to them because it could be translated into verse.  In circumstances, then, they were happier than they had been for many years:  nor was poverty the real reason for Hetty’s going into service at Kelstein; since Emilia had been fetched home from Lincoln (where for five years she had been earning her livelihood as teacher in a boarding-school) expressly to enjoy the family’s easier fortune, and with a promise of pleasant company to be met in Bawtry, Doncaster and the country around Wroote.

This promise had not been fulfilled, and Emilia’s temper had soured in consequence.  Nor had the Rector’s debts melted at the rate expected.  The weight of them still oppressed him and all the household:  but Mrs. Wesley knew in her heart that, were poverty the only reason, Hetty need not go.  Hetty knew it, too, and rebelled.  She was happy at Wroote; happier at least than she would be at Kelstein.  She did not wish to be selfish:  she would go, if one of the sisters must.  But why need any of them go?

She asked her mother this, and Mrs. Wesley fenced with the question while hardening her heart.  In truth she feared what might happen if Hetty stayed.  They had made some new acquaintances at Wroote and at Bawtry there was a lover, a young lawyer . . . a personable young man, reputed to be clever in his profession. . . .  Mrs. Wesley knew nothing to his discredit . . . and sure, Hetty’s face might attract any lover.  So her thoughts ran, without blaming the girl, whose heart she believed to be engaged,