She laughed merrily,—­and Mrs. Spruce for the life of her could not help laughing too.  The picture of Primmins condescending to indulge in a game of ‘nose and straw’ was too grotesque to be considered with gravity.

“Well I never, Miss!” she ejaculated—­“You do put things that funny!”

“Do I?  I’m so glad!” said Maryllia demurely—­“it’s nice to be funny to other people, even if you’re not funny to yourself!  But I want you to understand from the first, Spruce, that everyone must feel happy and contented in my household.  So if anything goes wrong, you must tell me, and I will try and set it right.  Now I’m going for an hour’s walk with Plato, and when I come in, and have had my tea, I’ll visit the picture-gallery.  I know all about it,—­Uncle Fred told me,”—­she paused, and her eyes darkened with a wistful and deepening gravity,—­then she added gently—­“I shall not want you there, Spruce,—­I must be quite alone.”

Mrs. Spruce again curtseyed humbly, and was about to withdraw, when Maryllia called her back.

“What about the clergyman here, Mr. Walden?”—­she asked—­“Is he a nice man?—­kind to the village people, I mean, and good to the poor?”

Mrs. Spruce gave a kind of ecstatic gasp, folded her fat hands tightly together in front of her voluminous apron, and launched forth straightway on her favourite theme.

“Mr. Walden is jest one of the finest men God ever made, Miss,” she said, with solemnity and unction—­“You may take my word for it!  He’s that good, that as we often sez, if m’appen there ain’t no saint in the Sarky an’ nowt but dust, we’ve got a real live saint walkin’ free among us as is far more ’spectable to look at in his plain coat an’ trousers than they monks an’ friars in the picter-books wi’ ropes around their waistses an’ bald crowns, which ain’t no sign to me o’ bein’ full o’ grace, but rather loss of ‘air,—­an’ which you will presently see yourself, Miss, as ’ow Mr. Walden’s done the church beautiful, like a dream, as all the visitors sez, which there isn’t its like in all England—­an’ he’s jest a father to the village an’ friends with every man, woman, an’ child in it, an’ grudges nothink to ‘elp in cases deservin’, an’ works like a nigger, he do, for the school, which if he’d ‘ad a wife it might a’ been better an’ it might a’ been worse, the Lord only knows, for no woman would a’ come up ‘ere an’ stood that patient watchin’ me an’ my work, an’ I tell you truly, Miss Maryllia, that when your boxes came an’ I had to unpack ’em an’ sort the clothes in ’em, I sent for Passon Walden jest to show ’im that I felt my ‘sponsibility, an’ he sez, sez he:  ‘You go on doin’ your duty, Missis Spruce, an’ your lady will be all right’—­an’ though I begged ’im to stop, he wouldn’t while I was a-shakin’ out your dresses with Nancy—­”

Here she was interrupted by a ringing peal of laughter from Maryllia, who, running up to her, put a little hand on her mouth.