“Dear Aunt Rachel,” said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser’s face, “it’s your kindness makes you say I’m useful to you.  You don’t really want me now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you’re in good health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few—­some of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily.  Indeed, you will not miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need, who have none of those comforts you have around you.  I feel that I am called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast.  I feel drawn again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word of life to the sinful and desolate.”

“You feel!  Yes,” said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance at the cows, “that’s allays the reason I’m to sit down wi’, when you’ve a mind to do anything contrairy.  What do you want to be preaching for more than you’re preaching now?  Don’t you go off, the Lord knows where, every Sunday a-preaching and praying?  An’ haven’t you got Methodists enow at Treddles’on to go and look at, if church-folks’s faces are too handsome to please you?  An’ isn’t there them i’ this parish as you’ve got under hand, and they’re like enough to make friends wi’ Old Harry again as soon as your back’s turned?  There’s that Bessy Cranage—­she’ll be flaunting i’ new finery three weeks after you’re gone, I’ll be bound.  She’ll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog ’ull stand on its hind-legs when there’s nobody looking.  But I suppose it doesna matter so much about folks’s souls i’ this country, else you’d be for staying with your own aunt, for she’s none so good but what you might help her to be better.”

There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser’s voice just then, which she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at the clock, and said:  “See there!  It’s tea-time; an’ if Martin’s i’ the rick-yard, he’ll like a cup.  Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if Father’s there, and tell him he mustn’t go away again without coming t’ have a cup o’ tea; and tell your brothers to come in too.”

Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups.

“You talk o’ them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i’ their work,” she began again; “it’s fine talking.  They’re all the same, clever or stupid—­one can’t trust ’em out o’ one’s sight a minute.  They want somebody’s eye on ’em constant if they’re to be kept to their work.  An’ suppose I’m ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last?  Who’s to look after ’em then, if you’re gone?  An’ there’s that blessed child—­something’s sure t’ happen to her—­they’ll let her tumble into the fire, or get at the kettle wi’ the boiling lard in’t, or some mischief as ‘ull lame her for life; an’ it’ll be all your fault, Dinah.”