‘Mrs. Thatcher is a very clever doctor, Mary,’ said Milly, as if by way of introduction; ’all our servants come to her to be cured when they have colds and coughs.—­And how are you this lovely summer weather, Mrs. Thatcher?’

‘None too well, miss,’ grumbled the old woman; ’I don’t like the summer time; it never suited me.’

‘That’s strange,’ said Milly gaily; ’I thought everybody liked summer.’

’Not those that live as I do, Miss Darrell.  There’s no illness in summer—­no colds, nor coughs, nor sore-threats, nor suchlikes.  I don’t know that I shouldn’t starve outright, if it wasn’t for the ague; and even that is nothing now to what it used to be.’

I was quite horror-struck by this ghoulish speech; but Milly only laughed gaily at the old woman’s candour.

’If the doctors were as plain-spoken as you, I daresay they’d say pretty much the same kind of thing, Mrs. Thatcher,’ she said.  ’How’s your grandson?’

’O, he’s well enough, Miss Darrell.  Naught’s never in danger.—­Peter, come here, and see the young ladies.’

A poor, feeble, pale-faced, semi-idiotic-looking boy came slowly out of the dark little bedroom, and stood grinning at us.  He had the white sickly aspect of a creature reared without the influence of air and light; and I pitied him intensely as he stood there staring and grinning in that dreadful hopeless manner.

‘Poor Peter!’ He’s no better, I’m afraid,’ said Milly gently.

’No, miss, nor never will be.  He knows more than people think, and has queer cunning ways of his own; but he’ll never be any better or wiser than he is now.’

’Not if you were to take as much pains with him as you do with the patients who pay you, Mrs. Thatcher?’ asked Milly.

‘I’ve taken pains with him,’ answered the woman, with a scowl.  ’I took to him kindly enough when he was a little fellow; but he’s grown up to be nothing but a plague and a burden to me.’

The boy left off grinning, and his poor weak chin sank lower on his narrow chest.  His attitude had been a stooping one from the first; but he drooped visibly under the old woman’s reproof.

‘Can he employ himself in no way?’

’No, miss; except in picking the herbs and roots for me sometimes.  He can do that, and he knows one from t’other.’

‘He’s of some use to you, at any rate, then,’ said Milly.

‘Little enough,’ the old woman answered sulkily.  ’I don’t want help; I’ve plenty of time to gather them myself.  But I’ve taught him to pick them, and it’s the only thing he ever could learn.’

‘Poor fellow!  He’s your only grandchild, isn’t he, Mrs. Thatcher?’