’I nursed her in my arms; I gave her little brother his last taste o’ earthly food,’ said Betty, putting her apron up to her eyes.

’Well! don’t let us show her we guess that she is grieving; she’ll get over it the sooner.  Her father and mother don’t even guess at it, and we must make as if we didn’t.  It’s too late now to do anything else.’

‘I’ll never let on; I know nought.  I’ve known true love mysel’, in my day.  But I wish he’d been farred before he ever came near this house, with his “Please Betty” this, and “Please Betty” that, and drinking up our new milk as if he’d been a cat.  I hate such beguiling ways.’

I thought it was as well to let her exhaust herself in abusing the absent Holdsworth; if it was shabby and treacherous in me, I came in for my punishment directly.

’It’s a caution to a man how he goes about beguiling.  Some men do it as easy and innocent as cooing doves.  Don’t you be none of ’em, my lad.  Not that you’ve got the gifts to do it, either; you’re no great shakes to look at, neither for figure, nor yet for face, and it would need be a deaf adder to be taken in wi’ your words, though there may be no great harm in em.  A lad of nineteen or twenty is not flattered by such an out-spoken opinion even from the oldest and ugliest of her sex; and I was only too glad to change the subject by my repeated injunctions to keep Phillis’s secret.  The end of our conversation was this speech of hers,—­

‘You great gaupus, for all you’re called cousin o’ th’ minister—­many a one is cursed wi’ fools for cousins—­d’ye think I can’t see sense except through your spectacles?  I give you leave to cut out my tongue, and nail it up on th’ barn-door for a caution to magpies, if I let out on that poor wench, either to herself, or any one that is hers, as the Bible says.  Now you’ve heard me speak Scripture language, perhaps you’ll be content, and leave me my kitchen to myself.’

During all these days, from the 5th of July to the 17th, I must have forgotten what Holdsworth had said about cards.  And yet I think I could not have quite forgotten; but, once having told Phillis about his marriage, I must have looked upon the after consequence of cards as of no importance.  At any rate they came upon me as a surprise at last.  The penny-post reform, as people call it, had come into operation a short time before; but the never-ending stream of notes and letters which seem now to flow in upon most households had not yet begun its course; at least in those remote parts.  There was a post-office at Hornby; and an old fellow, who stowed away the few letters in any or all his pockets, as it best suited him, was the letter-carrier to Heathbridge and the neighbourhood.  I have often met him in the lanes thereabouts, and asked him for letters.  Sometimes I have come upon him, sitting on the hedge-bank resting; and he has begged me to read him an address, too illegible for his spectacled eyes to decipher.  When I used