“I don’t want to be hard upo’ the gell.  She’s got cliver fingers of her own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi’ the butter, for she’s got a cool hand.  An’ let be what may, I’d strive to do my part by a niece o’ yours—­an’ that I’ve done, for I’ve taught her everything as belongs to a house, an’ I’ve told her her duty often enough, though, God knows, I’ve no breath to spare, an’ that catchin’ pain comes on dreadful by times.  Wi’ them three gells in the house I’d need have twice the strength to keep ’em up to their work.  It’s like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you’ve basted one, another’s burnin’.”

Hetty stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a sacrifice.  She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery which Mrs. Poyser disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door, and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked in her scarf and ear-rings.  To prevent such a surprise, she always bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night.  It was well:  for there now came a light tap, and Hetty, with a leaping heart, rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer.  She dared not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again.  We shall know how it was that the light tap came, if we leave Hetty for a short time and return to Dinah, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her mother’s arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Hetty’s.

Dinah delighted in her bedroom window.  Being on the second story of that tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields.  The thickness of the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she could place her chair.  And now the first thing she did on entering her room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow elms.  She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying, and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in silvered sweeping lines.  Her heart was very full, for there was to be only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene, for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms.  She thought of all the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful fields, and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance for ever.  She thought of the struggles and the weariness that might lie before them in the rest of their life’s journey, when she would be away from them, and know nothing of what was befalling them; and the pressure of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding stillness