One day at the beginning of July, I came home from mowing about noon, or a little later, to fetch some cider for all of us, and to eat a morsel of bacon.  For mowing was no joke that year, the summer being wonderfully wet (even for our wet country), and the swathe falling heavier over the scythe than ever I could remember it.  We were drenched with rain almost every day; but the mowing must be done somehow; and we must trust to God for the haymaking.

In the courtyard I saw a little cart, with iron brakes underneath it, such as fastidious people use to deaden the jolting of the road; but few men under a lord or baronet would be so particular.  Therefore I wondered who our noble visitor could be.  But when I entered the kitchen-place, brushing up my hair for somebody, behold it was no one greater than our Annie, with my godson in her arms, and looking pale and tear-begone.  And at first she could not speak to me.  But presently having sat down a little, and received much praise for her baby, she smiled and blushed, and found her tongue as if she had never gone from us.

“How natural it all looks again!  Oh, I love this old kitchen so!  Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy!  But who put the flour-riddle up there.  And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans!  And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to hang!  Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!”

“You may just as well cease lamenting,” I said, “for you can’t alter Lizzie’s nature, and you will only make mother uncomfortable, and perhaps have a quarrel with Lizzie, who is proud as Punch of her housekeeping.”

“She,” cried Annie, with all the contempt that could be compressed in a syllable.  “Well, John, no doubt you are right about it.  I will try not to notice things.  But it is a hard thing, after all my care, to see everything going to ruin.  But what can be expected of a girl who knows all the kings of Carthage?”

“There were no kings of Carthage, Annie.  They were called, why let me see—­they were called—­oh, something else.”

“Never mind what they were called,” said Annie; “will they cook our dinner for us?  But now, John, I am in such trouble.  All this talk is make-believe.”

“Don’t you cry, my dear:  don’t cry, my darling sister,” I answered, as she dropped into the worn place of the settle, and bent above her infant, rocking as if both their hearts were one:  “don’t you know, Annie, I cannot tell, but I know, or at least I mean, I have heard the men of experience say, it is so bad for the baby.”

“Perhaps I know that as well as you do, John,” said Annie, looking up at me with a gleam of her old laughing:  “but how can I help crying; I am in such trouble.”

“Tell me what it is, my dear.  Any grief of yours will vex me greatly; but I will try to bear it.”

“Then, John, it is just this.  Tom has gone off with the rebels; and you must, oh, you must go after him.”