“I will with pleasure, but let me ease you a little first. Here’s a rag that will be just the thing,” and Lyddy, suiting the pretty action to the mendacious word, took a good handkerchief from her pocket and tore it in three strips, after spreading it with tallow from a candle heated over the stove. This done, she bound up the burned hand skilfully, and, crossing the dining-room, disappeared within the little chamber door beyond. She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, “Would you—mind—going out in the orchard for an hour or so? You seem to be rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you’ll excuse me for saying so. I’m ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck; won’t you give me a trial, sir? Here’s your violin and your hat. I’ll call you if you can help or advise me.” “But I can’t let a stranger come in and do my housework,” he objected. “I can’t, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same.” “I am your nearest neighbour, and your only one, for that matter,” said Lyddy firmly; “it’s nothing more than right that I should look after that sick child, and I must do it. I haven’t got a thing to do in my own house. I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who’s been used to children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them.” A calm settled upon Anthony’s perturbed spirit, as he sat under the apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage. “She isn’t any old maid,” he thought; “she doesn’t step like one; she has soft shoes and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand like that; and such a voice!—I knew the moment she spoke that she didn’t belong in this village.” As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy’s voice, a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power. His sense of touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in remembrance—the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth nails, and firm round wrist. These charms would never have been noted by any seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft while Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds. It is these saving stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind. Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the moment. Anthony’s cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting him every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from Pleasant River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing. Between times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and although it was respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness about it, you may be sure.