"Th' mester's awful put out," he told me. "Aw heard thi mother askin' him if he weren't bahn to come up an' say good-bye to thee, Ben. But he said nowt. Tha's put his back up gradely this time, lad, an' I expect aw'st have a roughish time on it missen. But hard words an' foul looks break no bones, an' aw'd rather be i' Macclesfield wi' Awd Harry hissen,' just nah, nor at wom among th' Luds. No more sojerin' for me, Ben. My yed's fair stunned wi' th' din. An' ne'er thee mind about thi father. He'll come rahnd, an' then he'll ma' it up to thee as if he'd been i' fault hissen. By gow, tha has getten a arm, to be sure. It looks like three pund o' lites, and they'd best keep th' cat out o' th' room when th'ar asleep, or 'oo'l be at thee, sure as God made little apples." And soon afterwards I heard the cart lumbering out of the yard to the usual accompaniment of the dog's excited barking and 'Siah's apostrophes to Old Bess. Then my mother and Mary took possession of me, and I am persuaded that never did my mother enjoy herself so thoroughly as during the three weeks or more that I kept my bed. Her own room adjourned the one in which I lay, and as she was supposed to be herself bedridden she had all the advantage of being at close quarters. She would come to my bedside a hundred times a day in her linsey petticoat and a red flannel jacket with big bone buttone that gave her quite a martial air, and at every knock at the house door she would skip back to her own room, tumble into bed, draw the clothes over her, and set to groaning as tho' in mortal agony. Then, when retreating footsteps assured her the coast was clear, she would steal back with a shame-faced look and busy herself about the room. How many times a day she dusted the furniture of my room and arranged and rearranged the odds and ends on the little dressing table, I cannot hazard a guess at. She spent hours each day listening at the top of the staircase to what was going on below, for she was tortured by the conviction that things were going to rack and ruin in her absence and that Martha and Mary were in a conspiracy to do all things they ought not to do and leave undone the things they ought to do. Nothing would persuade her that any cleaning was being done in the parlour, and she knew that when she was able to get about again she would be able to write her name in dust on the looking-glass and the chiffonier, that is if she should haply be able to get into the room at all, of which she was somewhat sceptical. When Mary brought my chicken broth and rice pudding, my prescribed diet, on which by the bye I soon began to lose flesh at an alarming rate, my mother would meet her at the stair head and herself bring it to the bedside, very jealous, as was easy enough to see, that he could not cook it herself. Such tasting of broth and puddings sure never was before nor since, nor such fault-finding. Some days the rice hadn't been soaked long enough, other days too long. Some