Betty found her delightful.  She made no complaints, and was evidently pleased with the excitement of receiving a visitor.  The truth was, that in common with every other old woman, she had secretly aspired to being visited some day by the amazing young lady from “Meriker.”  Betty had yet to learn of the heartburnings which may be occasioned by an unconscious favouritism.  She was not aware that when she dropped in to talk to old Doby, his neighbour, old Megworth, peered from behind his curtains, with the dew of envy in his rheumy eyes.

“S’ems,” he mumbled, “as if they wasn’t nobody now in Stornham village but Gaarge Doby—­s’ems not.”  They were very fierce in their jealousy of attention, and one must beware of rousing evil passions in the octogenarian breast.

The young lady from “Meriker” had not so far had time to make a call at any cottage in old Mrs. Welden’s lane—­and she had knocked just at old Mrs. Welden’s door.  This was enough to put in good spirits even a less cheery old person.

At first Betty wondered how she could with delicacy ask personal questions.  A few minutes’ conversation, however, showed her that the personal affairs of Sir Nigel’s tenants were also the affairs of not only himself, but of such of his relatives as attended to their natural duty.  Her presence in the cottage, and her interest in Mrs. Welden’s ready flow of simple talk, were desirable and proper compliments to the old woman herself.  She was a decent and self-respecting old person, but in her mind there was no faintest glimmer of resentment of questions concerning rent and food and the needs of her simple, hard-driven existence.  She had answered such questions on many occasions, when they had not been asked in the manner in which her ladyship’s sister asked them.  Mrs. Brent had scolded her and “poked about” her cottage, going into her tiny “wash ’us,” and up into her infinitesimal bedroom under the slanting roof, to see that they were kept clean.  Miss Vanderpoel showed no disposition to “poke.”  She sat and listened, and made an inquiry here and there, in a nice voice and with a smile in her eyes.  There was some pleasure in relating the whole history of your eighty-three years to a young lady who listened as if she wanted to hear it.  So old Mrs. Welden prattled on.  About her good days, when she was young, and was kitchenmaid at the parsonage in a village twenty miles away; about her marriage with a young farm labourer; about his “steady” habits, and the comfort they had together, in spite of the yearly arrival of a new baby, and the crowding of the bit of a cottage his master allowed them.  Ten of ’em, and it had been “up before sunrise, and a good bit of hard work to keep them all fed and clean.”  But she had not minded that until Jack died quite sudden after a sunstroke.  It was odd how much colour her rustic phraseology held.  She made Betty see it all.  The apparent natural inevitableness of their being turned out of